The artwork “Illustration to ‘A Week of Kindness'” by Max Ernst, dated 1934 and created in Paris, France, embodies the surrealist movement through its medium of collage on paper. Measuring 18 x 13 cm, this piece serves as an illustration for Ernst’s series “A Week of Kindness” and is presently housed at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in Stuttgart, Germany.
Upon examining the artwork, one observes a black and white composition featuring a variety of figures within an interior setting that hints at a typical 19th-century bourgeois household. Prominent in the scene is a central figure, a man turning his back to the viewer, whose head seems disproportionately small in relation to his body, lending a dreamlike or fantastical quality consistent with surrealist techniques. To his left, a seated woman appears absorbed in contemplation, while another man with a shadowed face stands in a doorway, gesturing perhaps conversationally. To the far right, two individuals seem to be in a state of egress or withdrawal from the room. Furthering the surreal atmosphere, two small reversed images of a figure with his head in his hands echo each other on the walls of the room. The domestic harmony typically depicted in such a setting is subverted with the incongruity of scale and the enigmatic placement of figures, classic elements of the surrealist aesthetic that aimed to challenge the observer’s perceptions of reality. The work is, therefore, rich in visual paradox, a characteristic hallmark of Max Ernst’s approach to art during this period.
