Max Ernst and His Chess Set at the Chess Exhibition, "The Imagery of Chess"

In the summer of 1944, gallery owner Julien Levy, his wife Muriel, and the artist couple Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning rented a house together in Great River, Long Island. While there, they played a prodigious amount of chess. Levy and Ernst, later joined by artist Marcel Duchamp, conceived of an exhibition on the game, and “The Imagery of Chess” opened at Levy’s gallery in December 1944. In this press photograph, Ernst poses with his now–famous wood chess set, shown here in stained boxwood, one of three he made specifically for Levy’s exhibition.