Europe after the Rain I

Because this artwork was created in the year Hitler seized power, it has long been interpreted as foreshadowing a catastrophe that would transform the continent. In fact, Max Ernst, who left Germany to join the circle of French Surrealists and eventually emigrated to the United States, was probably referencing a utopian project, Atlantropa, first published by Hermann Soergel in 1929: the creation of a new continent, amongst other things by draining the Mediterranean Sea, originally conceived as a solution to the economic and political turmoil in Europe during the early 20th century. For his artwork Ernst used a plywood panel that had been part of a wooden wall on the set of Luis Buñuel’s film L’âge d’or (Age of Gold).