... age he had a fertile imagination, observing reality vividly and letting his fantasies play on it. Painting his fantasies and self-induced hallucinations seemed perfectly normal to him. Ernest often painted forests that are tightly packed and sinister. The sun shines down on them, but does not penetrate: sometimes in his cities are seen in the same way. These paintings are subtly frightening; the more you explore them the more like a nightmare they become. Ernst wrote about the forest, both as a perfect place for imagining, and as a perfect place where a person was in danger of death. It was the mixture of terror and fascination that the young Ernst had felt on going to a forest for the first time. At first sight the pictures appeal as decoration but gradually the sinister qualities become evident. Ernst's forests are full of symbols, like those of the German Romantic painter Casper ...

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