Max Ernst at the Kunsthaus Bar
- SITE_SPECIFIC
- Apr 5
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 11
One sunny afternoon a couple of years ago, not long after the grand reopening of the new Kunsthaus Zürich building and its bar, I wandered in out of casual curiosity. The space felt fresh and open, humming with a quiet kind of elegance. As I settled in, my eyes were instantly drawn to the vast mural stretching across one wall, a swirl of improbable forms, fantastical figures, and mysterious petals. I didn’t need to read a plaque to know whose work this was. The palette, the fluid strangeness, the dream logic, it was unmistakable. I was face to face with the work of my favorite surrealist artist, Max Ernst.
Captivated, I began to read up on the piece and was soon drawn into its tangled and fascinating history. Painted in 1934, the mural titled Pétales et jardin de la nymphe Ancolie originally graced the wall of the Corso Club in Zurich¹, a stylish gathering place of its time. Ernst, already a central figure in the Surrealist movement, had been invited to contribute a work to this modern space.
Zurich, known even then as a sanctuary for radical thought and artistic experimentation, was a fitting backdrop for his fantastical vision. By 1929, Ernst had already exhibited in Switzerland. First, he was a part of the group show at the Kunsthaus Zürich called Abstrakte und Surrealistische Malerei und Plastik², and later was included in the Emanuel Hoffmann collection exhibition in Basel in 1932. Hoffmann described Ernst as the artist best capable of expressing the “hostility of a world raised against us” in pictorial form, seeing in his paintings the drama of humanity caught between belief, power, and chaos.
Ernst’s connection to Switzerland extended beyond exhibitions: in 1934 he was a frequent guest at Sigfried and Carola Giedion-Welcker’s house in Zurich³. On one of these visits, he created the Frottage drawing Der Vogelobre Hornebomm for their young son, Andres. The drawing illustrates Ernst’s lifelong fascination with bird imagery, linking personal childhood experience of losing a beloved pet bird Hornebom, with his surrealist imagination and processing. This relationship with the family will later play role in the commission of Max Ernst’s Corso Bar mural, as Sigfried Giedion mediated Ernst’s entry into Zürich’s avant-garde circles and introduced him to Wladimir Rosenbaum, whose position as chairman of the Corso‑Gesellschaft provided the institutional approval and support to the project.
The mural was originally painted “al secco” on the plaster wall of the Corso Club, meaning Ernst applied oil paint onto dry plaster rather than wet, like in traditional fresco. This method allowed for richer textures and more painterly detail but made the work vulnerable to later damage. The artists's compositional strategy emphasized a monumental spatial dynamic, designed to set not only the wall but the surrounding room into motion.
The botanical and floral imagery of the mural resonates with Ernst’s recurring theme of metamorphosis: flowers, leaves, and stems often merge with limbs or fantastical beings, hinting at the fluid boundaries between human, animal, and plant life. The nymph Ancolie, central to the composition, reminds us classical mythological figures while merging with surrealist fantasy. She is a liminal figure poised between human and vegetal forms. She reflects Ernst’s interest in the vitality of nature as a site of unconscious energy, symbolizing fertility, metamorphosis, and the tension between organic life and human imagination.
The artwork has left no one indifferent. But like many artworks made for semi-public spaces, its future was uncertain. The Corso Club changed hands. By the 1950s, the mural had been hidden behind fabric, and eventually removed using the strappo technique, separating the paint layer from the wall in order to preserve it. The process, though effective in saving the piece, left it vulnerable. Years passed, and layers of overpainting dulled Ernst’s original intensity.
In 1965, the Kunsthaus Zürich acquired the mural, and it quietly waited for its renaissance. Decades later, the opportunity came: the opening of the museum’s elegant new extension and adjoining bar⁴. The decision to restore and reinstall Ernst’s mural in a space of gathering and contemplation, not unlike the bar it once lived in, felt poetic. Conservators worked with care and reverence, peeling back time to reveal Ernst’s original textures and color harmonies. They had to employ the strappo technique, a method specifically developed to detach painted surfaces from walls. To protect Ernst’s delicate paint layer, they first applied a facing made of adhesive cloth or paper, which allowed the surface to be safely handled during the separation process. The paint layer was then carefully lifted from the underlying plaster wall and mounted onto eighteen wooden panels holidng it now at its current location.
The result is stunning: a restored masterpiece reborn in a city that has always danced between tradition and avant-garde. For me, seeing it in person that day wasn’t just a surprise. It felt like a small moment of serendipity. That mural, once forgotten behind a curtain, now quietly steals the scene again. Like Zurich itself, the artwork embodies a dialogue between public and private spaces, personal memory, and avant-garde experimentation. It links Ernst’s surrealist vocabulary, his early formative experiences, and the city’s longstanding role as a hub for modernist art and collectors, preserving both historical and aesthetic significance in one striking visual experience.
Text by Olena Iegorova
Address:
Kunsthaus Zürich Bar
Heimplatz 1
8001 Zürich, Switzerland
Commissioned by:
Corso‑Gesellschaft, Zürich (mediated by Sigfried Giedion)
Notes:
Um 1930 in Zürich. Neues Denken. Neues Wohnen. Neues Bauen, Ausst.-Kat.
Kunstgewerbemuseum der Stadt Zürich, Zürich, 1977, S. 189-211 [Dokumentation des
Corso-Umbaus]
Kunsthaus Zürich Collection, Max Ernst, Pétales et jardin de la nymphe Ancolie, PDF
Julia Drost, Max Ernst in der Schweiz, Heidelberg University, 2007, PDF
Kunsthaus Zürich Collection, Max Ernst, Pétales et jardin de la nymphe Ancolie, PDF
