Jimmy Ernst was an American painter, who represented Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism movements. During his early years in New York, he worked with Rudy Blesh for Circle Records and designed covers for the jazz musician, Baby Dodds.
Background
Jimmy Ernst was born on June 24, 1920 in Cologne, Germany. He was a son of Max Ernst, a painter, and Luise Straus, art historian and journalist. Since 1922, when Jimmy's parents divorced, he lived with his mother in Cologne. When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, Jimmy immigrated to the United States.
Education
During the period from 1932 to 1936, Jimmy attended Lindenthal Real-Gymnasium in Cologne. In 1982, he received an honorary doctorate from Southampton College of Long Island University.
Career
Upon Jimmy's arrival in the United States, he found work in the film library at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. In 1942, he was appointed a director of Peggy Guggenheim's gallery-museum, Art of This Century.
In 1943, the painter held his first solo exhibition at the Norlyst Gallery. His early work was explicitly surreal, resembling his father's. Many of these paintings bear distinctly biomorphic and occasionally figurative forms. However, Ernst soon turned to Abstract Expressionism, working in a linear and geometric style.
In 1951, Jimmy held the post of an instructor at Department of Design in Brooklyn College.
During the 1960's and 1970's, Jimmy started to create paintings, that often incorporated Native American symbols. Toward the end of his life, he painted landscapes, that copied the linear precision of his early abstract work.
In 1980, he started his last major work, the Sea of Grass series, which was influenced by the landscape of his home in Florida. Some time later, in 1984, Jimmy published autobiography "A Not-So-Still Life".
The painter held numerous solo exhibitions at different museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (1956), Tampa Museum of Art (1994), Museum of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg, Florida (1998) and others. Also, his paintings were shown at several group exhibitions at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1944), Museum of Modern Art (1951), Metropolitan Museum of Art (1954), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1954, 1961) and others.
In 1950, Jimmy was a part of the group of artists, entitled "The Irascibles". They questioned the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s bias against the burgeoning Abstract Expressionist movement.
American Academy of Arts and Letters
,
United States
1983
Interests
Music & Bands
Jazz music
Connections
Ernst married Edith Dallas Bauman Brody (known as Dallas) on January 3, 1947. Their marriage produced two children — Amy Louise and Eric Max, both artists.