The German painter Max Ernst (1891-1976), a leading figure in the Dada and surrealist movements, possessed an amazing range of styles and techniques.

Max Ernst was born on April 2, 1891, in Brühl, Germany. His memories of his childhood were remarkably vivid, and they provided him with many subjects for his later paintings. He attended the University of Bonn, where he studied philosophy and abnormal psychology, which also provided material for his art. In 1912 he turned to painting seriously, but it was only in 1918, after his war service, that he began to develop his own style. He made a series of collages, using illustrations from medical and technical magazines to form bizarre juxtapositions of images.

These collages were Ernst's main production when he was active in the Dada group in Cologne from 1919 to 1922. The Dada movement with its irreverent attitude to conventional art and mores appealed to Ernst...