Max Ernst was born in Brühl, Germany, in 1891. In 1919 Ernst visited Paul Klee and created paintings, block prints and collages and experimented mixed media. Ernst, Jean Arp and social activist Alfred Grünwald, formed the Dada group in Köln, but two years later, in 1922, Ernst returned to the artistic community at Montparnasse in Paris.

In 1925, he invented a graphic art technique called frottage, which uses pencil rubbings of objects as a source of images. The next year he collaborated with Joan Miró on designs for Sergei Diaghilev. With Miró's help, Ernst pioneered grattage in which he troweled pigment from his canvases. Ernst began to sculpt in 1934, and spent time with Alberto Giacometti.

Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim arrived in the United States in 1941 and were married the following year. Along with other artists and friends (Marcel Duchamp and Marc Chagall) who had fled from the war and lived in New York City, Ernst helped to inspire the development of Abstract expressionism. He married the artist Dorothea Tanning in Beverly Hills, California in October of 1946. Ernst died on April 1, 1976, in Paris.