After Hours Tour in English: “Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington”

Educator Sandrine Welte leads a tour examining Max Ernst’s pictorial production through his works on view in the museum, with a particular focus on the 1930s and ‘40s. The tour pays special attention to the painting “The Antipope” (1941–42) and the influence of Ernst’s relationship with Leonora Carrington on his artistic practice.

In her autobiography, Out of This Century (1979), Peggy Guggenheim concluded her interpretation of Max Ernst’s The Antipope by recalling: “Much later I showed these photos to Alfred Barr because I wanted him to corroborate my theory, and he was much impressed by the resemblance.”
The large-scale and opulent canvas continues to fascinate viewers through its extraordinary composition, staging dramatic, unresolved enigmas rendered in a pictorial style that unites narration, technical mastery, and meticulous detail.
First exhibited at the Valentine Gallery, New York, from March through April 1942, The Antipope represents the culmination of a series of works depicting a young woman wearing a red dress. The appearance of this slender figure coincides with Ernst intense relationship with Leonora Carrington, which yielded a shared corpus of extraordinarily high-quality works of visual art, literature, and even architectural design.
By examining Ernst’s works in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the tour explores his impressively broad artistic language, focusing especially on the 1930s and ‘40s, a particularly prolific period during which his practice was profoundly influenced by his encounter with Carrington.

note

• Members only.
• The tour is in English.