SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Gallery Wendi Norris, in partnership with SHVO, is presenting a suite of twelve sculptures by the influential 20th-century artist Max Ernst in San Francisco’s iconic Transamerica Pyramid Center’s Redwood Park. This exhibition, Max Ernst at Transamerica Pyramid Center, extends SHVO’s initiative to curate world-class cultural programming in landmark properties, and Gallery Wendi Norris’ history of staging major exhibitions in non-traditional venues.

The sculptures – which have never previously been publicly exhibited together – are bronze casts of three-dimensional works executed by Ernst between 1938 and 1939, alongside his romantic partner, the celebrated artist Leonora Carrington. One of the foremost pioneers of the Surrealist and Dada movements, the German-born Ernst moved with Carrington to a house in the idyllic village of Saint-Martin-d’Ardèche in the south of France in 1938 to escape the pre-war conditions in Paris.

The period during which they inhabited their house between 1938 and 1941 was of consequential importance to the artistic trajectories – and livelihoods – of Ernst and Carrington. Nowhere is this more apparent than in this complex three-dimensional series of sculptures that transformed their house into a total work of art, epitomizing both artists’ daring and experimental visions that continue to provoke and inspire audiences to this day.

“It is an honor to partner with Michael Shvo and his visionary team at SHVO to reconstruct the world that Max Ernst built with Leonora Carrington,” said Wendi Norris, founder of Gallery Wendi Norris. “Their house not only was an oasis during a period of profound social and political tumult, but it is also one of the last remnants of the European avant-garde before this generation of great artists relocated, often in exile, to the Americas.”

Visitors to the Transamerica Redwood Park will encounter the sculptures presented in a manner that playfully reflects their original positioning and purpose in the Saint-Martin-d’Ardèche house. Greeting visitors at the park’s three exterior entrances are some of the largest sculptures in the series—Sphinx et Sirène, Sirène ailée, and L’Entrée des fantômes—which likewise stood at the thresholds of the house.

Overlooking the Transamerica Redwood Park is Tête de Loplop, a bust of the birdlike alter-ego of Ernst, suitably gazing out like a sentinel at the sculptures of his creation. One sculpture, the enigmatic La Femme à demi-tête, was originally conceived for an interior space, designed to surprise guests as they entered the living room; visitors will encounter this masterpiece in the lobby of the Transamerica Pyramid.

“Bringing these rare Max Ernst sculptures to the Transamerica Redwood Park offers visitors an unprecedented experience – one that fuses art, architecture, history and nature in the heart of downtown San Francisco,” said Michael Shvo, Chairman and CEO of SHVO. “Collaborating with our Jackson Square neighbor, Gallery Wendi Norris, underscores our ongoing commitment of bringing a rotation of world-class art and exhibitions to Transamerica Pyramid Center.”

Max Ernst at Transamerica Pyramid Center is the latest exhibition in SHVO’s Pyramid Arts – a series of public exhibitions celebrating innovation and creativity across the arts and sciences. The program has presented an exploration of tall buildings by Norman Foster and Foster + Partners, an installation of sculptures honoring the work of iconic French artists Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne and Pyramid Dreams, showcasing artwork by San Francisco schoolchildren inspired by the Transamerica Pyramid. The newest exhibitions – the Time Capsule Exhibition, displaying all contents found in a time capsule buried under the pyramid more than 50 years ago and Past as Prologue: The Last Decade of Furniture Design by Ray and Charles Eames (1968–1978) – are on view in the Transamerica Pyramid Annex.

The Transamerica Redwood Park will be activated throughout the course of the exhibition with a series of public programming, to be announced, that will inspire different ways of encountering these sculptures and the story of Ernst and Carrington.