Victor Brauner
Encyclopedia
Victor Brauner (ˈviktor ˈbrawner, also spelled Viktor Brauner; June 15, 1903 – March 12, 1966) was a Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

n Jewish painter of surrealistic images.

Early life

He was born in Piatra Neamţ
Piatra Neamt
Piatra Neamț , , ; is the capital city of Neamţ County, in the historical region of Moldavia, eastern Romania. Because of its privileged location in the Eastern Carpathian mountains, it is considered one of the most picturesque cities in Romania...

, the son of a timber manufacturer who subsequently settled in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 with his family for a few years. It is there that young Victor attended elementary school. When his family returned to the country in 1914, he continued his studies at the Evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...

 school in Brăila
Braila
Brăila is a city in Muntenia, eastern Romania, a port on the Danube and the capital of Brăila County, in the close vicinity of Galaţi.According to the 2002 Romanian census there were 216,292 people living within the city of Brăila, making it the 10th most populous city in Romania.-History:A...

; he began to be interested in zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...

 in that period.

He attended the National School of Fine Arts in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....

 (1919–1921) and Horia Igiroşanu's private school of painting. He visited Fălticeni
Falticeni
Fălticeni is a city in Suceava County, Romania, capital of the former Baia County . As of 2003 the population is 28,899, and the city covers an area of 28,76 km², of which 25% are orchards and lakes. The city is 25 km away from Suceava, the capital of the county...

 and Balcic, and started painting landscapes in the manner of Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...

. Then, as he testified himself, he went through all the stages: "Dadaist, Abstractionist
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...

, Expressionist".

On September 26, 1924, the Mozart Galleries in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....

 hosted his first personal exhibition. In that period he met poet Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca was a Romanian-French avant-garde poet and essayist.Voronca was of Jewish ethnicity...

, together with whom he founded the 75HP magazine. It was in this magazine that Brauner published the manifesto The Pictopoetry and the article The Surrationalism. He painted and exhibited Christ at the Cabaret (in the manner of George Grosz
George Grosz
Georg Ehrenfried Groß was a German artist known especially for his savagely caricatural drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s...

) and The Girl in the Factory (in the manner of Hodler
Ferdinand Hodler
Ferdinand Hodler was one of the best-known Swiss painters of the 19th century.-Life:Hodler was born in Berne, the eldest of six children. His father, Jean Hodler, made a meager living as a carpenter; his mother, Marguerite , was from a peasant family...

). He participated to the Contimporanul
Contimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...

exhibition in November 1924.

In 1925 he undertook his first journey to Paris, from where he returned in 1927. In the period 1928-1931 he was a contributor of the unu
Unu
unu was the name of an avant-garde art and literary magazine, published in Romania from April 1928 to September 1935. Edited by writers Saşa Pană and Moldov, it was dedicated to Dada and Surrealism....

magazine (an avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 periodical with Dadaist and Surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 tendencies), which published reproductions of most of his paintings and graphic works: "clear drawings and portraits made by Victor Brauner to his friends, poets and writers" (Jaques Lessaigne - Painters I Knew).

In 1930 he settled in Paris, where he met Constantin Brâncuşi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...

, who instructed him in methods of art photography. In that same period he became a friend of the Romanian poet Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane or Benjamin Fundoianu was a Romanian and French poet, critic and existentialist philosopher, also noted for his work in film and theater. Known from his Romanian youth as a Symbolist poet and columnist, he alternated Neoromantic and Expressionist themes with echoes from Tudor...

 and met Yves Tanguy
Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy , known as Yves Tanguy, was a French surrealist painter.-Biography:Tanguy was born in Paris, France, the son of a retired navy captain. His parents were both of Breton origin...

, who would later introduce him to the circle of the Surrealists. He lived on Moulin Vert Street, in the same building as Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...

 and Tanguy. He painted Self-portrait with enucleated eye, a premonitory theme.

In 1933, André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

 opened Brauner's first personal exhibition in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, at the Pierre Gallery. The theme of the eye was omnipresent: Mr. K's power of concentration and The strange case of Mr. K are paintings that Breton compared with Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....

’s play Ubu Roi
Ubu Roi
Ubu Roi is a play by Alfred Jarry, premiered in 1896. It is a precursor of the Theatre of the Absurd and Surrealism. It is the first of three stylised burlesques in which Jarry satirises power, greed, and their evil practices — in particular the propensity of the complacent bourgeois to abuse the...

, "a huge, caricature-like satire of the bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...

".

In 1935 Brauner returned to Bucharest. He joined the ranks of the Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...

 for a short while, without a very firm conviction. On April 7, 1935, he opened a new personal exhibition at the Mozart Galleries. Saşa Pană
Sasa Pana
Saşa Pană was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, and short story writer.-Biography:...

 wrote about it in his autobiographical novel Born in 02:

"April 7, 1935... An exhibition surrealist in character.

The catalogue shows 16 paintings; they are accompanied by verse, surrealist images that are exquisite by their bizarreness - they are perhaps the creations of automatic dictation and they certainly bear no connection to the painting itself. They are written in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, but their colorful taste is kept in their Romanian language
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...

 translation. The exhibition brought about many interesting articles and takings of position regarding Surrealism in arts and literature".

Another remark about Brauner’s participation to Surrealist exhibitions: "Despite its appearance of abstract formula,… this trend is a point a transition to the art that is to come." (Dolfi Trost
Dolfi Trost
Dolfi or Dolphi Trost was a Romanian surrealist poet, artist, and theorist, and the instigator of entopic graphomania. Together with Gherasim Luca, he was the author of Dialectique de la dialectique...

, in Rampa of April 14, 1935). In Cuvântul liber of April 20, 1935, Miron Radu Paraschivescu wrote in the article Victor Brauner’s exhibition: "In contrast to what one may see, for instance, in the neighboring exhibition halls, Victor Brauner’s painting means integration, an attitude that is a social one, as far as art allows it. For V. Brauner takes attitude through the very character and ideology of his art". On April 27, he created the illustrations for Gellu Naum
Gellu Naum
Gellu Naum was a prominent Romanian poet, dramatist, novelist, children's writer, and translator. He is remembered as the founder of the Romanian Surrealist group...

’s poetry collections - The Incendiary Traveler and The Freedom to Sleep on the Forehead.

Exiles

In 1938 he returned to France. On August 28 he lost his left eye in a violent argument between Oscar Domínguez
Óscar Domínguez
Oscar M. Domínguez was a Spanish surrealist painter.Born in San Cristóbal de La Laguna on the island of Tenerife, Domínguez spent his youth with his grandmother in Tacoronte and devoted himself to painting at a young age after suffering a serious illness which affected his growth and caused a...

 and Esteban Frances. Brauner attempted to protect Esteban and was hit by a glass thrown by Domínguez: the premonition became true.

That same year, he met Jaqueline Abraham, who was to become his wife. He created a series of paintings called lycanthropic
Lycanthropy
Lycanthropy is the professed ability or power of a human being to undergo transformation into a werewolf, or to gain wolf-like characteristics. The term comes from Greek Lykànthropos : λύκος, lykos + άνθρωπος, ànthrōpos...

or sometimes chimeras
Chimera (mythology)
The Chimera or Chimaera was, according to Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing female creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of multiple animals: upon the body of a lioness with a tail that ended in a snake's head, the head of a goat arose on her back at the center of her...

.

He left Paris during Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

's invasion of France in 1940, together with Pierre Malbille. He lived for a while in Perpignan
Perpignan
-Sport:Perpignan is a rugby stronghold: their rugby union side, USA Perpignan, is a regular competitor in the Heineken Cup and seven times champion of the Top 14 , while their rugby league side plays in the engage Super League under the name Catalans Dragons.-Culture:Since 2004, every year in the...

, at Robert Rius', then at Cant-Blage, in the Eastern Pyrenees and at Saint Feliu d'Amont, where he was forcibly secluded. However, he kept in touch with the Surrealists that had taken refuge in Marseille
Marseille
Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...

. In 1941, he was granted the permission to settle in Marseille. Seriously ill, he was hospitalized at the "Paradis" clinic.

He painted "Prelude to a civilization" in 1954, now in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

. The painting is in encaustic
Encaustic painting
Encaustic painting, also known as hot wax painting, involves using heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added. The liquid/paste is then applied to a surface—usually prepared wood, though canvas and other materials are often used...

 on Masonite
Masonite
Masonite is a type of hardboard invented by William H. Mason.-History:Masonite was invented in 1924 in Laurel, Mississippi, by William H. Mason. Mass production started in 1929. In the 1930s and 1940s Masonite was used for many applications including doors, roofing, walls, desktops, and canoes...

. After the war, he took part in the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

, and traveled to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

.

In 1959, he settled in the workshop on Lepic St. In 1961 he traveled to Italy again. In the same year, New York City's Bodley Gallery
Bodley Gallery
The Bodley Gallery was a prominent art gallery in New York City, USA, from the late 1940s through the early 1980s. The Bodley specialized in contemporary and modern art. David Mann was director of the gallery during its heyday and Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Braun The Bodley Gallery was a prominent art...

 mounted a solo exhibition of Brauner's work. He settled in Varengeville in Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...

, where he spent most of his time working.

In 1965 he created an ensemble of object-paintings full of inventiveness and vivacity, grouped under the titles Mythologie and Fêtes des mères. The themes are connected to the mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

 of the modern world, where man is depicted with humor, tenderness and pessimism, alienated by his new "mothers" - L’automoma and L'aeroplapa. Criticism or acceptance of this world, that once seemed "so terrifying" and in which "reality became an extremely harmful thing", but which actual life made more acceptable. It is undeniable that these paintings, made in Varengeville and in Athanor (1964), where Brauner retreated, are the visions full of humor and imagination of a future world that he wanted to leave to us as a gift. This Mythology includes the last foretelling painting, La fin et le debut (made in 1965), which reminds us that "when the painter's life ends, his work starts living" (Dominique Bozo in Le petit journal des grandes Expositions - Victor Brauner - au Musée National de l'Art moderne
Musée National d'Art Moderne
The Musée National d'Art Moderne is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. Created in 1947, it was then housed in the Palais de Tokyo and moved to its current location in 1977...

 - Paris du 2 juin au 28 septembre 1977
).

In 1966 he was chosen to represent France at the biannual exhibition in Venice, where an entire hall was dedicated to him.

He died in Paris as a result of a prolonged illness. The epitaph on his tomb from the Montmartre cemetery is a phrase from his notebooks: "Peindre, c'est la vie, la vraie vie, ma vie" ("Painting is life, the real life, my life").

The painter’s notebooks with private notes, which he handed to Max Pol Fouchet, partly enclose the "key" of his creation: "Each painting that I make is projected from the deepest sources of my anxiety..."

Victor Brauner's brother, Harry Brauner
Harry Brauner
Harry Brauner was a Romanian ethnomusicologist, and composer, professor of music, director of the Institut de Folklor in Bucharest . He is the brother of Victor Brauner and the husband of Lena Constante. Harry Brauner is known as Constantin Brăiloiu's disciple and colleague...

, was a folklorist who later married Lena Constante
Lena Constante
Lena Constante was a Romanian artist, essayist and memoirist, known for her work in stage design and tapestry. A family friend of Communist Party politician Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, she was arrested by the Communist regime following the conflict between Pătrăşcanu and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej...

.

External links

Victor Brauner biography
  • Biography at Guggenheim Museum
  • Biography at 3d-dali.com
  • Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte - OPAC: German archive listing of 1961 New York solo exhibition catalogue: "Victor Brauner: paintings, encaustics, drawings; 1932 - 1959" / Bodley Gallery
    Bodley Gallery
    The Bodley Gallery was a prominent art gallery in New York City, USA, from the late 1940s through the early 1980s. The Bodley specialized in contemporary and modern art. David Mann was director of the gallery during its heyday and Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Braun The Bodley Gallery was a prominent art...

    ; New York, 1961.
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art page on Brauner's "Prelude to a Civilization" (1954), part of the museum's permanent collection and continually on exhibit; page includes color image Victor Brauner

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