![1927, Max Ernst, Forest and Sun (Sunset) [Wald und Sonne (Sonnenuntergang)] -- Albertina (Vienna) | by R.M.Lenox](http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54456645869_f61bc25f1c.jpg)
1927, Max Ernst, Forest and Sun (Sunset) [Wald und Sonne (Sonnenuntergang)] -- Albertina (Vienna)
From the museum label: Max Ernst's forest pictures were made in 1927: impenetrable and gloomy sylvan facades crowned by a ring-shaped celestial body. They are mythic places emanating a fairytale spirit. Far from a liberating feeling elicited by nature, they are eerie, menacing, and oppressive. Trunks collapsing like ruins and an apocalyptically glowing sunset herald destruction and the desire for freedom. The technique of grattage—with paints applied and then scratched off and abraded—augments this destructive impression. Max Ernst was still a child when he felt a magical attraction in the woods for the first time, a feeling of "delight and fright." This contradiction lives on here: in the simultaneity of light and dark, of reality and dream, of peril and hope.
1927, Max Ernst, Forest and Sun (Sunset) [Wald und Sonne (Sonnenuntergang)] -- Albertina (Vienna)
From the museum label: Max Ernst's forest pictures were made in 1927: impenetrable and gloomy sylvan facades crowned by a ring-shaped celestial body. They are mythic places emanating a fairytale spirit. Far from a liberating feeling elicited by nature, they are eerie, menacing, and oppressive. Trunks collapsing like ruins and an apocalyptically glowing sunset herald destruction and the desire for freedom. The technique of grattage—with paints applied and then scratched off and abraded—augments this destructive impression. Max Ernst was still a child when he felt a magical attraction in the woods for the first time, a feeling of "delight and fright." This contradiction lives on here: in the simultaneity of light and dark, of reality and dream, of peril and hope.