Jimmy Ernst

Rating:
Summary: An impressive, profusely illustrated monograph
Review: In Jimmy Ernst, art critic Donald Kuspit presents an impressive, profusely illustrated monograph on the artwork of Jimmy Ernst (1920-1984). Ernst's art was unique to his time as he drew upon boyhood memories of Germany (his father was the great Surrealist master Max Ernst, his mother Jewish journalist and art historian Louise Straus-Ernst -- killed in the Holocaust at the hands of Nazis. Ernst developed a distinctly American style of his own blending abstract, crystalline form to the spiritual imagery of Gothic art. Ernst fused the vigor of American jazz and Native American cultural concepts with his European memories in paintings that would evolve decade by decade as expressions of "visual scat", an ultimately pure abstraction. Jimmy Ernst is a welcome and important contribution to the history of 20th Century American art.