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31.5" x 23.5"

Offset Lithograph

Max Ernst
German Dadaist/Surrealist
(1891 - 1976)

Max Ernst's Au premier mot limpide (At the First Limpid Word), 1923, is one of a series of decorations he painted for Paul Eluard's house in Eubonne.

In 1922 "Dada Max" moved from his native Cologne to Paris, where he spent some time living with the poet Paul Eluard and his wife Gala in a mysterious menage a trois. It was in Eluard's house, in the summer of 1923, that Max Ernst realised a number of unique Surrealist wall-paintings, which were later taken down and transferred to canvas. Au premier mot limpide was originally in the bedroom. The image of an opened wall through which a larger-than-life female hand is reaching into the room in order to catch a strange insect by means of a ball and thread mechanism, was directly above the headboard of the Eluards' marital bed.

Very beautiful reproduction on heavy paper, printed in Germany in 2002 for the museum trade.

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