November Book Club Gathering “A Not-So-Still Life” by Jimmy Ernst

“Jimmy Ernst, son of twentieth-century giant Max Ernst, the great Surrealist, and a major painter himself, relates with pain and humor both his European childhood amidst a community that was revolutionizing art and literature on the eve of World War II; and his arrival in America at eighteen, alone and penniless, with no knowledge of English, where he found support and the home he had never had.  It is a moving account of growing up as the son of a brilliant, erratic father who looms large, for good and ill; and most of all, it is a tribute to and appreciation of his mother, Louise Straus-Ernst, art historian and journalist, who vanished on one of the last trains to Auschwitz.  Studded with the leading personalities of art in our time and the colorful characters on its periphery”… “this memoir takes us from the Dada happenings through Guggenheim’s “Art of This Century” to the manifestos of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism.”

Please Note! Some used copies of the book are still available from online bookstores if you Google the title.  However, it may take up to three weeks for the books to arrive, so it is important to order early to have time to read it before the November meeting.