Darsie Japp, London (a gift from the artist and sold: Sotheby's, London, March 31, 1965, lot 37)
Richard Feigen Gallery, New York (acquired at the above sale)
Acquired from the above

London, Tate Gallery, Max Ernst, 1961, no. 106
New York, Museum of Modern Art & traveling, Max Ernst, Works on Paper, 1968, no. 34
Dusseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Max Ernst Collagen: Stichwort, 1989, no. 190
Canberra, National Gallery of Australia; Brisbane, Queensland Art Gallery & Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Surrealism: Revolution by Night, 1993, no. 82

Werner Spies, Max Ernst, Oeuvre-Katalog: Werke 1929-1938, Cologne, 1979, no. 1784, illustrated p. 113

Executed on cream wove paper. The sheet has been hinged to a mount at several places along the perimeter of its verso. There are scattered faint spots of foxing in the upper left quadrant as well as a few some minor stains along the extreme right edge. The lower left edge of the right-most collage element is slightly lifting. The colors remain fresh and strong, though the sheet is lightly time-stained. The work is in overall very good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Executed in 1931, Loplop présente belongs to one of the most creative periods in Max Ernst’s oeuvre, marked by a constant stream of technical experimentation and invention. It was during the late 1920s and early 1930s that the artist established his personal mythology, his visual universe of themes and images that were to become central to his entire career. His experimentations with ways of applying pigment onto the surface resulted in the discovery of frottage in 1925. Fascinated by the rich texture of the floorboards, he would place sheets of paper onto their surface and rub over them with graphite. This would result in various relief-like forms that suggested particular images to the artist, and with a few strokes added by hand he would arrive at fantastic, unexpected compositions.

Ernst adopted as his alter-ego a curious bird-like figure named Loplop, whose genesis he related to a moment of profound change which occurred in his childhood when his younger sister was born: “1906… A friend by the name of Hornebom, an intelligent, piebald, faithful bird dies during the night; the same night a baby, number six, enters life. Confusion in the brain of this otherwise quite healthy boy—a kind of interpretation mania, as if newborn innocence, sister Loni, had in her lust for life taken possession of the vital fluids of his favourite bird… In the boy’s mind there remains a voluntary if irrational confounding of the images of human beings with birds and other creatures; and this is reflected in the emblems of his art” (quoted in Werner Spies, Max Ernst, Loplop, The artist’s other self, London, 1983, p. 10).

In the celebrated opening passage of his autobiographical treatise Beyond Painting (1948), Ernst recounts a vivid dream in which striations of wood, drawn over a mahogany panel, magically transform themselves into myriad images of animals. As an archetypal Surrealist anecdote, this seemingly fantastical episode on anthropomorphic transformation would serve as a foundation for the painter’s future artistic explorations, where animal and natural imagery would become icons of his distinctive pictorial language. This concept of metamorphosis between the organic and concrete is suggested within Loplop présente, which hovers enticingly on the boundary between abstractiꦦon and figuration.