Max Ernst (1891-1976)

Many of Ernst’s mid-1920s paintings depict two caged birds, trapped together in close confinement where they are prevented from spreading their wings. In Oiseaux en cage, the two birds huddle close together, the smaller one curling up into the body of the larger one. Here a poetic expression of something exotic and precious seems to have been both constrained by as well as born from a heavy, earthy materiality.
Such was the profligacy of Ernst’s depiction of imprisoned love birds that it is tempting to see these works as being in some way expressive of his personal life. In 1925, Ernst traveled to Indochina to save the relationship between Gala and Paul Eluard. These were two dear friends with whom Ernst had lived for over a year in a ménage-à-trois until Eluard had suddenly fled to Saigon in desperation. Now living alone after effectively reuniting Eluard and Gala as a couple, it seems likely that the series of dove paintings that Ernst began to create upon his return, and which more often than not depict either a lone caged bird or, as in this work, a loving couple, to some extent mirror his reflections on the inevitable and necessary break-up and reconfiguring of this important relationship in his life.