Hans-Ulrich Ernst (June 24, 1920 – February 6, 1984), known as Jimmy Ernst, was an American painter born in Germany.
Early life
Jimmy Ernst was born in 1920 in
Cologne
Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...
, Germany, the son of
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany, the country of the Germans and German things
**Germania (Roman era)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
Surrealist painter
Max Ernst
Max Ernst (; 2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German-born painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism in Europe. He had no formal artistic trai ...
and
Luise Straus-Ernst, a well-known art historian and journalist.
His parents separated in 1922 and divorced in 1926 and Ernst remained with his mother in Cologne.
He visited his father in France in 1930, where he met many artists, including
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish and Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians and directors to be one of the greatest and ...
,
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (11 May 190423 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí ( ; ; ), was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, ...
,
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, Drafter, draftsman and Printmaking, printmaker, who was one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His work was particularly influenced ...
,
André Masson
André-Aimé-René Masson (; 4 January 1896 – 28 October 1987) was a French artist.
Biography
Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but when he was eight his father's work took the family first briefly to Lille and then to Brus ...
,
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , ; ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan Spanish painter, sculptor and Ceramic art, ceramist. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona ...
,
Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American naturalized French visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, ...
and
Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy (January 5, 1900 - January 15, 1955), known as just Yves Tanguy (; ), was a French Surrealist painter.
Biography
Tanguy was the son of a retired navy captain, and was born January 5, 1900, at the Ministry of Naval Aff ...
, as well as his father's lover
Leonora Carrington
Mary Leonora Carrington (6 April 191725 May 2011) was a British-born, naturalised Mexican Surrealist painter and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City and was one of the last surviving participants in the Surrealist movem ...
.
In February 1933, a month after
Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
became
Chancellor of Germany
The chancellor of Germany, officially the federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the head of the federal Cabinet of Germany, government of Germany. The chancellor is the chief executive of the Federal Government of Germany, ...
, the
SS searched Luise Straus' apartment.
As a noted intellectual and a Jew she was regarded as suspect by the new regime.
Ernst was sent to live with his grandfather, Luise's father, while his mother moved to Paris.
In June 1938, Jimmy sailed to New York from
Le Havre
Le Havre is a major port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy (administrative region), Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the Seine, river Seine on the English Channel, Channe ...
on the liner
SS ''Manhattan''.
There he met many European exiles and the city's avant-garde.
In 1940, he petitioned the
Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) to secure the release of his father from internment.
The ERC secured his release in 1941 and Max Ernst arrived in New York from
Nazi occupied France.
In 1944, unknown to Jimmy, his mother was killed in
Auschwitz
Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...
concentration camp after being sent there from the
Drancy internment camp
Drancy internment camp () was an assembly and detention camp for confining Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps during the German military administration in occupied France during World War II, German occupation of France duri ...
in France.
Career
In 1941 Jimmy Ernst became the assistant/secretary to
Peggy Guggenheim
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim ( ; August 26, 1898 – December 23, 1979) was an American art collector, bohemianism, bohemian, and socialite. Born to the wealthy New York City Guggenheim family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who we ...
(who was also his stepmother). Shortly afterwards Ernst became director of
The Art of This Century Gallery
The Art of This Century gallery was opened by Peggy Guggenheim at 30 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City on October 20, 1942. The gallery occupied two commercial spaces on the seventh floor of a building that was part of the midtown arts ...
in 1942.
A year later he had his first one-person exhibition.

During the late 1940s he became a member of
The Irascible Eighteen, a group of abstract painters who protested against the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
's policy towards
American painting of the 1940s, and who posed for a famous picture in 1950. Members of the group included:
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning ( , ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. Born in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, he moved to the United States in 1926, becoming a US citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married pa ...
,
Adolph Gottlieb
Adolph Gottlieb (March 14, 1903 – March 4, 1974) was an American abstract expressionist painterChilvers, Ian & Claves-Smith, John eds., ''Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. pp. 282-283 who also m ...
,
Ad Reinhardt
Adolph Friedrich Reinhardt (December 24, 1913 – August 30, 1967) was an American abstract painter and art theorist active in New York City for more than three decades. As a theorist he wrote and lectured extensively on art and was a ...
,
Hedda Sterne,
Richard Pousette-Dart
Richard Warren Pousette-Dart (June 8, 1916 – October 25, 1992) was an American abstract expressionist artist most recognized as a founder of the New York School of painting.Kimmelman, Michae"Richard Pousette-Dart, 76, Dies; An Early Abstract E ...
,
William Baziotes
William Baziotes (June 11, 1912 – June 6, 1963) was an American painter influenced by Surrealism and was a contributor to Abstract Expressionism.
Life and career
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Greek parents Angelos and Stella, Baziotes w ...
, Jimmy Ernst,
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter. A major figure in the abstract expressionist movement, Pollock was widely noticed for his "Drip painting, drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household ...
,
James Brooks,
Clyfford Still
Clyfford Still (November 30, 1904 – June 23, 1980) was an American Painting, painter, and one of the leading figures in the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, who developed a new, powerful approach to painting in the years immediat ...
,
Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American Abstract Expressionism, abstract expressionist Painting, painter, printmaker, and editor of ''The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology''. He was one of the youngest of th ...
,
Bradley Walker Tomlin,
Theodoros Stamos
Theodoros Stamos (Greek: Θεόδωρος Στάμος) (December 31, 1922 – February 2, 1997) was a Greek-American painter. He is one of the youngest painters of the original group of abstract expressionist painters (the so-called " Irasc ...
,
Barnett Newman
Barnett Newman (January 29, 1905 – July 4, 1970) was an American painter. He has been critically regarded as one of the major figures of abstract expressionism, and one of the foremost color field painters. His paintings explore the sense ...
, and
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko ( ; Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz until 1940; September 25, 1903February 25, 1970) was an American abstract art, abstract painter. He is best known for his color field paintings that depicted irregular and painterly rectangular reg ...
. These artists are part of the
New York School they were referred to as
The Irascibles in an article featured in an issue of ''
Life
Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, Structure#Biological, organisation, met ...
'' where the infamous
Nina Leen photograph was published.
In 1951 Jimmy was granted the post of an instructor at Department of Design,
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn in New York City, United States. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls nearly 14,000 students on a campus in the Midwood and Flatbush sections of Brooklyn as of fall ...
.
In 1969 he moved to
East Hampton. He also built a winter home in
Florida
Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...
in 1980.
Awarded
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...
in 1961, a
Carnegie Foundation grant in 1967, and an honorary degree by the
Long Island University
Long Island University (LIU) is a private university in Brooklyn and Brookville, New York, United States. The university enrolls over 16,000 students and offers over 500 academic programs at its main campuses, LIU Brooklyn and LIU Post on Long I ...
(Southampton College) in 1982.
Also elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...
. In 1977, he was elected into the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Frederick Styles Agate, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, an ...
as an Associate Academician.
Personal life
Ernst married Edith Dallas Bauman Brody (known as Dallas), a talent scout for
Warner Brothers
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...
, on January 3, 1947. They had two children, Amy Louise (1953) and Eric Max (1956), both of whom are artists.
His memoir, ''A Not-So-Still Life'', dealing with his youth and early years in the United States, was published shortly before his death in 1984.
[Ernst]
Dallas Ernst established the
Jimmy Ernst Award in memory of her husband. The award of $10,000 is given to a painter or sculptor "whose lifetime contribution to his or her vision has been both consistent and dedicated".
The
American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...
has presented the award annually since 1990.
Notes
Further reading
*
*
*C. Bau, A. Dieckhoff, edd., ''Zwiebelfische: Jimmy Ernst, Gluckstadt - New York'' (2011. Edition Klaus Raasch)
ith DVD
External links
Official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ernst, Jimmy
1920 births
1984 deaths
Painters from Cologne
20th-century American painters
American male painters
Abstract expressionist artists
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States
Burials at Green River Cemetery
Brooklyn College faculty
20th-century American male artists
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters