Chess was a game that was inherent within the circles of the Surrealist artists, not only as a form of social enjoyment but also as recurrent subject in their art. Often the boundaries and perception of chess as a board game and chess as work of art merged. Marcel Duchamp, arguably the most skilled of the artist’s at the game who championed the title Chess Master, even asked the American writer, Truman Capote, "Why isn't my chess playing an art activity?...A chess game is very plastic. You construct it. It's mechanical sculpture and with chess one creates beautiful problems and that beauty is made with the head and hands" (quoted in A. Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, New York, 2000, p. 72).

Roi, reine et fou is a sculpture by Max Ernst based on chess pieces that he had created as part of a complete playing set. Ernst designed and created many sets during his life, one of which Duchamp owned and on which he regularly played chess with Ernst and his wife Dorothea Tanning. Never losing sight of the game itself Ernst combined aesthetics and competition in his designs, even colour coding the squares of one board according to their strategic significance and importance in winning the game.

In Roi, reine et fou Ernst takes the chess pieces away from the board and presents them as independent sculptures in a timeless regal portrait. However, Ernst dismisses the hierarchy and positioning of the pieces by splitting the King and Queen with another piece. This piece takes on a different importance in the arrangement and changes the narrative depending on the translation; in English this piece is a Bishop, so perhaps turning the arrangement into a wedding scene between King and Queen; in German this piece is a ‘runner’, or Läufer, connecting the regal couple; and in French this figure is a Fou, a court jester, who is jovially separating the couple by taking the centre stage.