The Witch by Max Ernst in the Princeton University Art Museum, April 2017

Max Ernst, German, 1891–1976


The Witch, 1941

Oil on canvas

24.5 x 19 cm (9 5/8 x 7 1/2 in.) frame: 33.4 × 28.2 × 3.5 cm (13 1/8 × 11 1/8 × 1 3/8 in.)

Gift of Alfred H. Barr Jr., Class of 1922, and Mrs. Barr

y1979-5

© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris

Werner Spies; Sigrid Metken; et al., Max Ernst - Werke 1939- 1953 (Koln: DuMont, 1987): 45 cat. no. 2390


Handbook Entry
A pivotal figure in the twentieth-century avant-garde, Max Ernst helped form the Cologne-based Dadaists in 1919. He moved to Paris in 1922 and became involved with France’s nascent Surreal­ist movement a few years later. Influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud, Ernst prized the unconscious, the irrational, and the uncanny. Art, he believed, should serve as a repository for immaterial states of mind. The Surrealists projected many of their fantasies onto women, and Ernst was no exception. Painted the same year he fled Europe for New York seeking sanctuary from the Nazis, this painting depicts one of Ernst’s favorite subjects — the witch — whose powers of metamorphosis inspired both fear and fascination. In order to more faithfully channel the unconscious into art, the Surrealists embraced automatism, a technique intended to inhibit deliberation. The Witch, for instance, was made using decalcomania, a process whereby sheets of glass or paper are pressed into wet paint, resulting in unpredictable bubbles and rivulets.

Signed, bottom right: max ernst/41; Signed, verso, top: max ernst;

Gallery Label

A pivotal figure of the twentieth-century avant-garde and a foundational artist of French Surrealism, Ernst was influenced by Sigmund Freud’s writings on the unconscious, the irrational, and the uncanny. Painted the same year he fled Europe for New York, seeking sanctuary from the Nazis, The Witch depicts one of Ernst’s favorite subjects, a fantastical figure whose powers of metamorphosis inspire both fear and fascination. To more faithfully channel the unconscious into art, Ernst embraced automatist techniques that incorporate elements created by chance and suspend the artist’s deliberation. The Witch, for instance, was made using decalcomania, a process whereby sheets of glass or paper are pressed into wet paint, resulting in unpredictable bubbles and rivulets that serve as the starting point for the final composition.


Text from: artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/32398