The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (158 page)

 
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(1880–1959).
American-born sculptor (and occasional painter and illustrator) who settled in England in 1905 and became a British citizen in 1911. Before then, in 1902–5, he had studied in Paris and visits to the
Louvre
aroused an interest in ancient and
primitive
sculpture that lasted all his life and powerfully affected his work. His first important commission was executed in 1907–8: eighteen over life-size figures for the façade of the British Medical Association's headquarters in the Strand. The nude figures aroused a furore of abuse on the grounds of alleged obscenity and were destroyed in 1937 when the building was bought by the government of Southern Rhodesia. Such verbal attacks and acts of vandalism were to become a feature of Epstein's career. The next scandal came with his tomb of Oscar Wilde (Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, 1912), a magnificently bold and original piece featuring a hovering angel inspired by Assyrian sculpture, which was banned as indecent until a bronze plaque had been fixed over the angel's sexual organs. (It was removed in a night raid by a band of artists and poets.) While he was in Paris working on the tomb Epstein met
Picasso
,
Modigliani
, and
Brancusi
and was influenced by their formal simplifications. Back in England he associated with Wyndham
Lewis
and the
Vorticists
, and in
The Rock Drill
(Tate, London, 1913–14), a robot-like figure that was originally shown aggressively mounted on an enormous drill, he created his most radical work; he said it symbolized ‘the terrible Frankenstein's monster we have made ourselves into’. Epstein's later work was generally much less audacious than this, but his public sculptures were still attacked with monotonous regularity, their expressive use of distortion being offensive to conservative critics even when they were immune to charges of indecency.
Rima
, a memorial to the naturalist W. H. Hudson in Hyde Park (1922), and the enormous bronze group of
St Michael and the Devil
(1958) at Coventry Cathedral are two of his most famous later works. From the 1920s Epstein devoted himself more and more to bronze portrait busts, and these—unlike his monumental works—have always had an appreciative audience. Many of the great figures of the time sat for him and he portrayed them with psychological insight and great mastery of expressive surfaces, carrying on the tradition of
Rodin
.

 
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Erbslöh , Adolf
.

See
NEUE KÜNSTLERVEREINIGUNG
.

 
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(1891–1976).
German-born painter, printmaker, collagist, and sculptor who became a French citizen in 1958, one of the major figures of
Dada
and especially of
Surrealism
. He studied philosophy and psychology at Bonn University, but he became fascinated by the art of psychotics (he visited the insane as part of his studies) and neglected academic work for painting. After serving in the First World War he became with
Arp
(his lifelong friend) the leader of the Dada movement in Cologne. In 1920 he organized one of Dada's most famous exhibitions in the conservatory of a restaurant there. Visitors entered through the lavatories and axes were provided so they could smash the exhibits if they felt so inclined. In 1922 he settled in Paris, bringing Dada techniques of
collage
and
photomontage
with him, and he joined the Surrealist movement on its formation in 1924. Even before then, however, he had painted works such as
The Elephant Celebes
(Tate, London, 1921) that are regarded as Surrealist masterpieces. The irrational and whimsical imagery seen here, in part inspired by childhood memories, occurs also in his highly individual collages. In them he manipulated banal engravings so that the contrast between the archaic appearance of the engraving and the startling novelty he created from it made an impact of strangeness and unreality. In this vein he produced ‘collage novels’, the best known of which is
Une Semaine de Bonté
(1934). His work was always imaginative and experimental and he was a pioneering exponent of
frottage
. In the 1930s sculpture also began to occupy a prominent place in his work. In 1938 he broke with the Surrealist movement, but this did not affect his work stylistically. He was interned for a short while after the German invasion of France and in 1941 went to New York, remaining in America until 1953 (apart from a visit to France in 1949). While in the USA he collaborated with
Breton
and
Duchamp
in the periodical
VVV
. He settled permanently in France in 1953 and in his late years acquired many honours. His painting of this time became more lyrical and abstract.
Ernst was married four times. His third (very brief) marriage was to Peggy
Guggenheim
; his fourth wife (married 1946) was Dorothea Tanning (1910– ), one of the outstanding American Surrealist painters. In the late 1930s he lived in Paris with the British-born (later Mexican) Surrealist painter and writer Leonora Carrington (1917– ). His son
Jimmy Ernst
(1920–84) was also a painter.

 
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(1892–1990).
Russian-born French designer, painter, and sculptor. He was born in St Petersburg into an aristocratic family and in 1912 moved to Paris, where he studied at the
Académie
Julian. Erté was best known for his fashion illustrations (particularly for the American magazine
Harper's Bazaar
) and for his costume and set designs for theatre, cabaret, opera, ballet, and cinema (he designed costumes for Mata Hari among other celebrities). However, he also painted, and in the 1960s he produced lithographs and made sculpture from sheet metal.