Jimmy Ernst

Jimmy Ernst, an Abstract-Surrealist painter and the only son of seminal Surrealist Max Ernst and art historian Louise Strauss-Ernst, moved from Germany to New York City in 1938. Before immigrating to America, Ernst had the opportunity to meet some of the most influential European artists of the 1920s. He began to paint after he found work in the film department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and was greatly influenced by not only European art, but also by Hopi Indian ceremonies and Jazz music. One of his paintings was acquired by MoMA in the early 1940s and was used in a series of lectures by Gordon Onslow Ford at the New School. Ernst's work eventually became a crucial link between European Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.

His works vary from oil on canvas, ink and gouche on paper, collage elements, and painted sculpture. Ernst became director of The Art of This Century Gallery in 1942, and had his first solo exhibition in 1943. Ernst published an autobiography, A Not So Still Life, just before his death in 1984.