Confidences (Les Confidences) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle)

Confidences (Les Confidences) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) is a seminal print created by Max Ernst in c. 1925 and published in 1926 as part of a revolutionary portfolio. This work is one of thirty-four collotypes that reproduce Ernst’s original frottages, a technique he invented that same year. Frottage involves placing paper over a textured surface, such as woodgrain or leaves, and rubbing graphite across it to capture the pattern. By documenting these random patterns, the Surrealist artist bypassed conscious control, transforming the banal textures of the natural world into evocative, mysterious compositions.

Ernst, a leading figure in the French Surrealist movement, utilized this process to generate imagery that hovers between abstraction and figuration. In Confidences, the textured fields coalesce into forms suggestive of two intimate figures, or perhaps architectural elements defined by shadows and light. The resulting composition conveys a sense of private narrative or clandestine meeting suggested by the title, yet the subject matter remains enigmatic, derived entirely from the chance interaction between paper and surface material. The Histoire naturelle portfolio quickly became a foundational text for Surrealist automatic drawing and printmaking, establishing the validity of chance procedures in modern art production.

This particular print, classified within the classification of printmaking, resides in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Produced in the middle of the 1920s, the piece powerfully demonstrates Ernst’s move away from collage toward direct textural manipulation. Its influence on subsequent generations of conceptual and graphic artists is profound. As an iconic example of Surrealist innovation from the c. 1925, published 1926 period, this important French work ensures Ernst’s place among the masters of 20th-century art. Prints and reproductions derived from this historically significant series are often accessible to the public through the public domain today.