Max Ernst studied philosophy, art history, and psychiatry at the University of Bonn, in Germany. After fighting in World War I (1914-18), he founded the dada movement of Cologne, in partnership with sculptor Jean Arp (1886-1966). He moved to Paris to join the surrealists at the invitation of the movement’s mentor, poet André Breton (1896-1966). His paintings and collages from that period critically reflect the experience of authoritarianism that was spreading through Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Ernst moved to the United States in 1940 with art collector and patron of the arts Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979), whom he then married, only returning definitively to Paris in 1953. Bryce Canion Translation (1946) was made in the United States, based on a commission to illustrate an article for the magazine Fortune (June 1947), whose theme was the mountains and deserts of the American West. The painting shows Bryce Canyon National Park, a place formed by erosion. This landscape has a lunar and mysterious character, with its dry, sunlit land; the round, reddish stones form abstract patterns.
— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017
By Luciano Migliaccio
Bryce Canion Translation is part of a portfolio of paintings and drawings illustrating the national parks of the United States that was commissioned by Fortune magazine in June 1947.
— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998