Max Ernst — Sammlung de Menil, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, 1970

Original exhibition poster. Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, 1970. 42 × 59 cm. Offset lithograph on paper.

Condition: good vintage condition with visible handling wear, creasing, light edge wear, minor surface marks and age toning. Presents well.

Original poster for Max Ernst: Sammlung de Menil, held at Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, 3 July – 30 August 1970. Large black type, institutional header, central colour reproduction, and exhibition details printed at the foot.

The Menil Collection did not open its main public building until 1987, so this 1970 poster belongs to an earlier phase: the de Menils’ private Surrealist collection travelling through European institutional space. John and Dominique de Menil’s involvement with Ernst began in the early 1930s, when they commissioned his portrait of Dominique; they later became major US-based supporters of Ernst, Magritte, and Brauner.

The address printed on the poster also matters. Kestner-Gesellschaft had reopened in 1948 at Warmbüchenstraße after its forced closure under Nazism, continuing its role as a Hanover institution for international modern and contemporary art.

A poster, but also a transfer document: German Surrealism, American collecting, postwar Hanover, and the administrative language of exhibition-making held on one sheet of paper.