In 1946, Max Ernst (1891–1976) and his fiancée and fellow Surrealist Dorothea Tanning purchased a plot of land in Sedona, Arizona and built a new home in the desert. The couple quickly adjusted to the hot climate, the isolation, and the barren, beautiful landscape. The desert deeply impacted Ernst, influencing his art even after his return to Europe in 1953. His painting Calme, 1958, demonstrates a lingering preoccupation with the American West. Its broad expanse of sky, bold sunbeams, and bare cliffs may be seen as direct references to the Sedona landscape within an otherwise surreal composition.

Calme also features the eerie astronomical motifs that Ernst frequently painted in the 1920s. Its two multicolored suns, one in the sky and the other superimposed onto the blue-black water, recall works such as The Forest, 1927–28, among others. In The Forest, Ernst paints dark branches reaching up through sun-like disks, much as the waves in Calme appear to flow through a yellow-green sun. A science enthusiast, Ernst merged specific references to the natural world with his vibrant Surrealist imagination.

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Achim Moeller