Max Ernst Value: Top Prices Paid at Auction

Ernst's current auction record was set at Christie's New York in November 2022 by the bronze sculpture Le Roi Jouant Avec La Reine (1944), when it achieved almost 200% of its high estimate. The sculpture had previously sold for £10.8million in 2017 - a dramatic price increase over five years - demonstrating the rapidly escalating value of Ernst’s work. The title of the work translates as “The King Playing With The Queen,” referring to the horned king figure looming over a conical queen and a group of other chess pieces. Ernst created the sculpture while in exile in the US during World War II, and channels this sense of foreboding and displacement - Ernst had previously used chess piece sculptures to symbolise power dynamics and strategy. However, despite the overarching uncertainty and danger of the time, 1944 was an incredibly productive year for Ernst, with many other popular works created.

The Stolen Mirror (1941), created at the height of Ernst's creative powers, achieved more than double its high estimate at Christie's New York in November 2011. The work later resold for £6.75million in 2016, demonstrating the market's occasional volatility even for major pieces. This large-scale painting, at 65 x 81cm, exemplifies Ernst's mature Surrealist style, combining precise technical execution with dreamlike imagery. Its subjects are at once recognisable and unrecognisable, with patterns and shapes from nature transformed into an otherworldly scene - an effect that is in part due to Ernst’s pioneering use of decalcomania, which involved pressing paint between two surfaces. At the time of its creation, between 1940 and 1941, Ernst was focused on developing a series of landscape-and-figure compositions.

Selling at Christie's New York in May 2015, Le Couple (L'Accolade) (1925) represents one of Ernst's most compelling explorations of human relationships through his Surrealist lens. Created during the early years of Surrealism, the painting showcases Ernst's evolution from Dada to his more mature style, with unconventional depictions of the human form and collage-like applications of paint. Ernst’s move to Paris in 1922 exposed him to the Surrealist movement and kickstarted this evolution of style, as seen in Le Couple’s unexpected juxtapositions of textures and forms. The work's strong performance at auction underscores the value placed on pieces from this pivotal period, when hints of all the evolving styles from Ernst’s career can be read in one painting.

This 1940 masterpiece achieved its impressive price at Sotheby’s New York in May 2012. Like many of Ernst’s paintings created during his wartime stay in France, Leonora In The Morning Light is rich in emotional turbulence, with rich colours and contrast and shapes that are designed to unsettle. Significantly, this painting was completed between January and May 1940, soon after Ernst’s release from imprisonment as an enemy alien, and soon before his exile to the US. Its title refers to Leonora Carrington, Ernst’s lover of three years and fellow Surrealist artist; in the painting, she emerges from the dark and dangerous jungle as a source of hope and joy. The inscription “to Leonora” is set in the lower right corner as the work was given to Carrington as a gift and remained in her personal collection for many years.

Achieving this strong result at Christie's New York in May 2017, The Phases Of The Night is one of Ernst's most accomplished works from 1946. It was created in the aftermath of World War II, when Ernst's style had fully matured, combining his signature techniques with a dreamlike quality that is enhanced through Ernst's sophisticated layering of imagery, creating a mysterious nocturnal landscape that exemplifies his unique contribution to Surrealism. Broken shadows and overlays of lighter shades of colour help to capture the passage of time as suggested by the title. The landscape is, however, strikingly different to those created earlier in his career. Its vast, open horizon may well have been influenced by the scenery of his new home in Sedona, Arizona, where he had just moved with his new wife Dorothea Tanning.

Selling at Christie's London in March 2021, this 1927 painting exemplifies Ernst's masterful exploration of mysterious landscapes during his most innovative period. The work's successful sale during the height of the global pandemic demonstrates the resilience of Ernst's market for significant pieces from the 1920s. Its interest to collectors may also come from its extensive exhibition history, appearing at prestigious galleries such as the Tate, London, the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, and the Fundación Joan Miró, Barcelona. The work formed part of Ernst’s Forest Paintings series and is a prime example of grattage, relying on the technique’s texture to create detail. Ernst believed the forest to be a “shadowy borderland” between the known and unknown, imbuing all of his paintings with this mystical, overwhelming feeling. At the centre, a small bird is trapped in a cage, confined within this impenetrable symbolic landscape.

This haunting work from 1940 achieved its price at Sotheby’s New York in November 2017. Created during the same turbulent period as Leonora In The Morning Light, The Endless Night reflects Ernst's psychological response to the upheaval of war and exile, encapsulating the sense of foreboding felt following two internments by the Nazis as a German national. The painting's dark palette and mysterious, often unidentifiable, forms demonstrate his ability to translate personal and collective trauma into powerful visual metaphors, a characteristic that continues to resonate with collectors. The scene takes the viewer past prehistoric plant forms and almost-figures, through a landscape that seems to be situated somewhere between waking and dreaming.

Sold at Christie's London in June 2011 at an Impressionist Et Moderne sale, La Chute De L'Ange (1923) exemplifies Ernst's ability to transform religious and mythological forms into Surrealist compositions by altering their context. The work’s title translates to “The Fall Of An Angel,” although its subject matter references a different kind of ‘fall’ to the biblical kind, humanising superhuman figures through gentle abstraction. At 130 x 130cm in size, this monumental oil painting exemplifies Ernst’s transition from Dada to Surrealism, capturing the disillusionment and spiritual upheaval characteristic of this period in time.

his significant work from 1934-35 achieved its result at Christie's London in February 2020 at the Art of the Surreal Evening Sale. The title, which translates to “Landscape-Effect Of Touching,” alludes to the rhythmic waves of colour, which resemble both rolling hills and waves and were created using his frottage technique. The painting was originally kept by Ernst himself until 1941, when it was sold to a New York gallery. It appeared in many exhibitions across the US throughout the second half of the 20th century, before its sale again in the 1970s. After decades of subsequent private display, its appearance at auction in 2020 was a significant event for Ernst collectors, particularly due to the painting’s unusual colour palette and composition for an Ernst work.

Les Asperges De La Lune (1935) sold at Sotheby’s New York in May 2018. The sculpture was originally cast in plaster, but later cast into bronze, in an edition of 11 between 1972 and 1973. The original plaster version is housed at the Museum of Modern Art. Its name, which translates to “Lunar Asparagus,” playfully combines natural animal and vegetable shapes, alluding to the erotic French connotations of asparagus. It is one in a series of nine large sculptures that Ernst created during his time in Paris in the mid-1930s, each exemplifying Ernst’s love of contradictions, complex context, and altered natural forms.