April is the month of Max Ernst‘s birth and life (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976), so it seems appropriate to celebrate his contributions to Surrealism and the Dada movement with the first post of our “Celebrating Art History” series. The series will pop up from time-to-time, when historical dates of significant artists pop up. The posts will serve less to inform with biographical information, but more to inform with visual examples. They will be mere introductions into the art and lives of notable artists who you may or may not already know, hopefully instilling readers with the curiosity to delve into the past. Ernst is certainly a well-known name, but they won’t all be this way!

Now onto some of Ernst’s works.

The Gramineous Bicycle Garnished with Bells the Dappled Fire Damps and the Echinoderms Bending the Spine to Look for Caresses. 1920/21. Gouache on print. 74.3 x 99.7 cm. The Museum of Modern Arts, New York, NY, USA.

Of This Men Shall Know Nothing. Oil on canvas. 81 x 64 cm. 1923. Tate Gallery, London, UK. (Many pieces of art these days are certainly reminiscent of this image by Ernst.)

L’Ange du foyer ou Le Triomphe du surréalisme. 1937. Oil on canvas. 114 x 146 cm. Private collection.

Read a detailed biography of Ernst on Wikipedia.

Polly Verity makes amazingly intricate paper sculptures. Her geometric forms turn sheets of paper into medium-defying series of sinuous curves, and her meticulously crafted animals are imposing in spite of their small stature.

Alice Duke takes fantasy themes and makes them contemporary and deliciously appealing, even to non-Dungeons & Dragons folk.

Montreal-based photographer and deigner Sofia Ajram is stupidly multi-talented. I’m not sure whether to pay more attention to her photography or her design. But it’s her designs that really stand but to me, because they’re from her experiments in “Make Something Cool Every Day”. It’s amazing what some people can crank out on a daily basis. Here are my favorite entries from the ongoing series.

Gideon Chase has a temporary Tumblr blog up, and there’s only six images on them. They’re perfect, though. More words would be superfluous.

Until May 1st, multi-disciplinary artist Claire Burbridge and paper sculptor Matthew Picton have a really exciting show at Toomey Tourell in San Francisco. Burbridge entombs sculptures in blocks of resin, serving to capture a moment of human life in time. Picton creates his signature paper sculptures of three-dimensional city maps, only to burn them systematically to show the aftermath of destruction. It’s a show that explores humanity and how it deals with change — particularly harsh change. Highly recommended.