Collection Online

A week of kindness or The seven deadly sins
(Une Semaine de bonté, ou Les Sept Péchés capitaux)
(1934)

Medium
lineblock illustrations and letterpress text
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased NGV Foundation, 2021
Gallery location
Not on display
 

About this work

Max Ernst began making highly inventive collages and photomontages in Cologne from 1918, and continued to champion these media when he joined the Surrealists in Paris in the early 1920s. By the end of the decade he had developed the innovative form of the collage novel, in which the story is conveyed without text through a sequence of surreal collages. Ernst’s collages were constructed using clippings from illustrated Victorian penny dreadfuls and popular books on science and natural history and reproduced by lineblock. Une Semaine de bonté was Ernst’s most extensive collage novel, comprising 182 collages specifically devised for the publication.

Artwork Details

Medium
lineblock illustrations and letterpress text
Measurements
(27.8 × 22.2 cm)
Place/s of Execution
Paris, France
Accession Number
2021.749.4
Department
International Prints and Drawings
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased NGV Foundation, 2021
Gallery location
Not on display