Label Text
Jimmy Ernst's style is immediately identifiable and clearly individual, yet it is also difficult to define and paradoxical in its implications. The structures and patterns are meticulously designed and constructed, but they yield a sense of fantasy and evocation. This fusion of exactitude and mystery is related to the ambiguity of pure abstraction that has at the same time suggestions of subjects. The double play of elements is nowhere more apparent than in his construction of space, which by turn can seem flat and enormously deep, at once bounded by the design, or potentially infinite.
Jimmy Ernst was born in Bruehl, Germany, in 1920; his mother was a leading art critic, and his father the surrealist painter Max Ernst. He studied at European craft schools, and came to the United States while still in his teens. It was at the age of twenty that he decided upon a career as a painter... . Source: Bulletin, February 1967.
Exhibition History"Selected Works from the Des Moines Art Center's Permanent Collection," organized and circulated by the Waterloo Municipal Galleries, Sponsored by the National Bank of Waterloo, Oct. 24 - Nov. 20, 1983, (circulated to: Charles H. MacNider Museum, Mason City, Jan. 15 - Fed. 26, 1984; Muscatine Art Center, April 1 - May 13, 1984; Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, May 27 - July 1 1984; Sioux City Art Center, July 15 - Aug. 26, 1984)
Published ReferencesDMAC Bulletin, Feb. 1967, cover ill.
DES MOINES ART CENTER: SELECTED PAINTINGS, SCULPTURE AND WORKS ON PAPER, Des Moines Art Center, 1985, ref. p.67
"Selected Works from the Des Moines Art Center's Permanent Collection," Waterloo Municipal Galleries, IA, 1984, exh. cat. no.12
Exhibition History"Selected Works from the Des Moines Art Center's Permanent Collection," organized and circulated by the Waterloo Municipal Galleries, Sponsored by the National Bank of Waterloo, Oct. 24 - Nov. 20, 1983, (circulated to: Charles H. MacNider Museum, Mason City, Jan. 15 - Fed. 26, 1984; Muscatine Art Center, April 1 - May 13, 1984; Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, May 27 - July 1 1984; Sioux City Art Center, July 15 - Aug. 26, 1984)
Published ReferencesDMAC Bulletin, Feb. 1967, cover ill.
DES MOINES ART CENTER: SELECTED PAINTINGS, SCULPTURE AND WORKS ON PAPER, Des Moines Art Center, 1985, ref. p.67
"Selected Works from the Des Moines Art Center's Permanent Collection," Waterloo Municipal Galleries, IA, 1984, exh. cat. no.12
DimensionsOverall: 24 × 30 in. (61 × 76.2 cm)
Accession Number 1966.22
Classificationspainting
CopyrightARS
SignedJimmy Ernst 66 (l,r oil paint)
ProvenanceArtist; Des Moines Art Center [gift of the previous, 1966]
