Oiseaux rouges (Red Birds)

Frottage, the pictorial equivalent of the automatic writing posited by André Breton, was invented by Max Ernst in 1925. This technique involved rubbing a pencil on paper or a canvas spread across a rough surface, one which was rich in texture, for instance a wooden board, leaves from a tree or shells, thereby creating the appearance of unpredictable figures.

The transposition of this technique to oil painting is called grattage, which Ernst uses in Oiseaux rouges (Red Birds), where he retouches the resulting image to turn it into a compressed group of birds floating in an undefined space.

By way of the theories of Sigmund Freud and in analysing the symbology of his dreams and recollections of childhood, Ernst discovered that for him birds had an intimate meaning, with images of them become a recurring motif across his work following his involvement with the Cologne Dada group in 1918. From 1928, he developed an alter ego, “Loplop, the Bird Superior”, which appeared in works such as the collage-novels La Femme 100 Têtes (The Hundred Headless Woman) and Une Semaine de Bonté (A Week of Kindness).



Raúl Martínez Arranz