Through his experiments with materials and techniques as well as his antiformalist pictorial compositions, painter and sculptor Max Ernst (1891–1976) surprised and provoked the art world time and again. With his mural Pétales et Jardin de la Nymphe Ancolie (1934) as the focal point, this publication zooms in on selected aspects of the artist’s work, thus permitting a finely honed look at his multifaceted oeuvre. Paintings, collages, and sculptures dealing with gardens and plants as well as with the transformation of nature into anthropomorphic figures are visualizations of the vast iconographical breadth of this painting. Among these are Jardins gobe-avions and works featuring Loplop, a bird that was the artist’s alter ego. This volume also touches on other key themes in Ernst’s work, such as mechanics and eroticism in his Dadaist collages as well as his deliberate use of automatism and coincidence in his frottages.  Exhibition schedule: Museum Tinguely, Basel, September 12, 2007–January 27, 2008  The Menil Collection, Houston, October 30, 2008-February 15, 2009