Max Ernst born of Philipp and Luise Ernst in Bruhl, Germany.  He attended the University of Bonn, where he studied psychiatry and philosophy.  He served in the military during the First World War in Europe supporting the Russian Revolution. "Ernst was chased from France with the Gestapo at his heels" (2 Nolan).  There he joined a dadaism group (Dada criticized usual standards of aesthetics and behavior yet stressed the unpredictable and absurdity in artistic creation).  He formed the Dada group in Cologne, Germany.  He married his first wife, Luise in 1918.  With her, he has his only child, a son named Jimmy.  They divorced shortly after.
       Ernst did not like being associated with groups or being categorized.  Neither did he like being an ordinary person of the sensible world. Being a self taught artist who was constantly reinventing surrealism as an artistic theory, he attended regular meetings and exhibitions of the Surrealism.  Being an abstract artist, he had a bizarre collection of paintings, sculptures, and collages.  He developed the technique "frottage," which is the process of putting paper or material on a textured surface and using a media to transfer the design onto the paper or media.   Aside from being an artist he also was a poet.
He had been married a total of four times.  He fled from Europe to America in 1940, and became an American citizen in 1948.  Later he went back to France, where he became a citizen.  He died at the age of 85.
 
 
 

To keep from plagiarizing I have included sources of where the information came from below.
 http://www.artchive.com/artchive/E/ernst.html.
 http://www.xrefer.com