Nearly 80 exceptional works brought together at Chaumont-sur-Loire
Until 28 February 2027, the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire is hosting an exceptional exhibition devoted to Max Ernst, a leading figure of Surrealism.
Bringing together nearly 80 works, De natura features remarkable paintings from the Centre Pompidou and the Fondation des Treilles, two series of major importance in the history of Surrealism, Histoire Naturelle and Une semaine de bonté, on loan from the Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger, as well as spectacular tapestries depicting forests from the collections of the Mobilier national.
Enhanced by loans from private collections, the exhibition explores Max Ernst’s unique relationship with nature, through imaginary landscapes, metamorphoses and fantastical visions.
PLAN YOUR VISIT
DATES
3 October 2026 to 28 February 2027
10am – 7pm
10am – 5.30pm from 2 November
ACCESS
South Entrance
Free parking
PRICES
Access to the exhibition is included, at no extra charge, with an admission ticket to the Domain.
For Max Ernst, nature is never reduced to the representation of a landscape. Forests, gardens and organic or mineral formations become territories of transformation, where the outside world merges with dreams, memory and the imagination.
Through paintings, sculptures, tapestries, collages and frottages, De natura reveals a shifting, mysterious, sometimes unsettling nature, forever in transformation. A nature not only as it is seen, but above all as it is experienced, dreamed and inwardly transformed.
Presented at the Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire, this exploration takes on a particular resonance: here, the real landscape enters into dialogue with Max Ernst’s fantastical universe, in a place entirely devoted to the relationship between art, nature and landscape.
THE GARDEN OF FRANCE
At the heart of the exhibition, Le Jardin de la France occupies a central place.
Far removed from any bucolic vision, the work presents a constructed landscape crossed by the Loire, which structures its space and composition. The river is not merely a geographical feature: it becomes a flow, a circulation and a principle of memory. The garden, meanwhile, appears as nature conceived and ordered, yet always permeated by strangeness and the proliferation of forms.
Presented at the Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire, the work takes on a very particular resonance. It enters into direct dialogue with a place that likewise regards the garden as a space for reflection, experimentation and storytelling.
MAX ERNST
A major figure in 20th-century art, Max Ernst (1891–1976) was one of the leading artists of Dada and, later, Surrealism. A painter, sculptor, printmaker and author of illustrated books, he constantly experimented and helped renew artistic practices..
Collage, frottage, grattage, assemblage… Max Ernst invented and subverted techniques to bring unexpected images to light, in which reality, dreams and the imagination continually intertwine.
After living in Germany, Paris and then the United States, he returned to France and settled in Huismes, in Touraine, in 1955, where he continued his explorations in painting and sculpture. He became a French citizen in 1958.
Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning
“Le pin perdu” Huismes – Studio
Summer 1955
Photograph by Lee Miller
INTRODUCTION
