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Max Ernst (French, born Germany, 1891–1976). Girls Chasing Butterflies. Circa 1958. Fundacion Coleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain. Photo Credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY. © 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Reproduction, including downloading of Max Ernst works, is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of ARS, New York.

An artist with a tumultuous life—combat in World War I, arrest by the Gestapo during World War II, multiple marriages—Ernst was a Dadaist and Surrealist who experimented with a variety of media and pioneered grattage, the technique of troweling and scraping the paint across the canvas. His dreamlike works could be both whimsical and disturbing, and he himself called them “seditious, uneven, contradictory.” Here, children run in circles, their legs and arms outstretched as they whirl through a cloud of bright wings; other intended meanings are less clear.