Fleurs sur fond vert

Painted in 1928, Fleurs sur fond vert belongs to a series of coquillages paintings Max Ernst executed in the late 1920s. Stimulated by the ideas espoused by the Surrealists and continuing his exploitation of chance dating back to his involvement in Dada, in works such as Fleurs sur fond vert Ernst sought a way to prompt his unconscious mind through the deliberate creation of evocative patterns. Applying paint with a knife, Ernst created an intricate, weave-like texture, which let these hermetic creatures surface on the canvas, caught in between the mineral and the animal world. Nature was always important in Ernst's art, but where in other works he had used natural objects - wood, leaves, sand and so forth - as prompts, in Fleurs sur fond vert Nature is the subject, portrayed through the chance-dictated application of the paint. By consciously controlling the creative process, yet letting his unconscious interpret the pattern created by chance, Ernst provided Surrealist painting with a new, exciting alternative to automatic drawing.

Exploring the tension between the conscious and the unconscious, Fleurs sur fond vert is reminiscent of the works of the Surrealist painter Yves Tanguy. In his art, Tanguy sought to render a world beyond perceived reality, strange yet somehow recognisable, arranging odd biomorphic shapes onto a bare landscape. With its strange, impossible landscape and the scattered, unidentifiable objects, Fleurs sur fond vert creates an environment close to that of Tanguy's works. Whereas most of Ernst's coquillages are cluttered with groups of shells dominating the composition, Fleurs sur fond vert deliberately exploits a sparse, desolate background, emphasising the alien, yet suggestive nature of these unusual objects.