Max Ernst, "Une semaine de bonté" — the Original Collages

After 1850, sensational images were to be found everywhere: in books and magazines, and newspapers and advertisements of every sort.
Born in 1891, Max Ernst was a child of this revolution. He would take advantage of his culture and visual memories in 1933 deciding, when the Surrealist movement was at its height, to use a number of old illustrations for his own purposes.

He used Sade and Fantômas, Doré and Grandville as sources as well as the covers of detective stories. The book that came out of this brilliant plundering in 1934 — without text and consisted of one part for each day of the week — clearly shows how the 20th century took inspiration from its predecessor.