Victor Brauner (15 June 1903 - 12 March 1966) was a surrealist painter and poet.

Literature[edit]
 Irina Cărăbaş, "Representing Bodies: Victor Brauner’s Hybrids, Fragments and Mechanisms", Nordlit 21
(2007), Special Issue: Centre-Periphery. The Avant-Garde and the Other, pp 229-240.

 Victor Brauner, Livres illustrés: Catalogue Raisonné, Michael Ilk, 2009. [1]

See also[edit]
 Romania#Avant-garde

Links[edit]
 http://exhibitions.europeana.eu/exhibits/show/dada-to-surrealism-en/jhm-bucharest/victor-
brauner, http://exhibitions.europeana.eu/exhibits/show/dada-to-surrealism-en/jhm-1930s/victor-brauner

 Brauner at Wikipedia

Victor Brauner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigationJump to search

Victor Brauner
 Brauner and his work on a 2018 stamp sheet

Born 15 June 1903

Piatra Neamț, Romania

Died 12 March 1966

Paris, France

Education Bucharest National University of Arts

Movement Surrealism

Victor Brauner (Romanian: [ˈviktor ˈbrawner], also spelled Viktor Brauner; 15 June 1903 – 12 March
1966) was a French Romanian sculptor and painter of surrealistic images.

Contents

 1Early life
 2Exiles
 3See also
 4References
 5Bibliography
 6External links
Early life[edit]
He was born in Piatra Neamț, Romania, the son of a Jewish timber manufacturer who subsequently
settled in Vienna with his family for a few years. It is there that young Victor attended elementary
school. When his family returned to Romania in 1914, he continued his studies at
the Lutheran school in Brăila. His interests revolved around zoology during that period.
He attended the National School of Fine Arts in Bucharest (1916–1918)[1] and Horia
Igiroşanu[2]private school of painting. He visited Fălticeni and Balcic, and started painting landscapes
in the manner of Paul Cézanne. Then, as he testified himself, he went through all the stages:
"Dadaist, Abstractionist, Expressionist".
On 26 September 1924, the Mozart Galleries in Bucharest hosted his first personal exhibition. In that
period he met poet Ilarie Voronca, together with whom he founded the 75HP magazine.[1] 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)
and The Girl in the Factory (in the manner of Hodler). He participated to
the Contimporanul exhibition in November 1924.

Signe (Le vent), 1942, Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris

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 magazine (an avant-garde periodical with Dadaist
and Surrealisttendencies), 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 Brâncuși, who instructed him in methods of art
photography. In that same period he became a friend of the Romanian poet Benjamin Fondane and
met Yves Tanguy, who would later introduce him to the circle of the Surrealists.[1] He lived on Moulin
Vert Street, in the same building as Alberto Giacometti and Tanguy. He painted Self-portrait with
enucleated eye, a premonitory theme.
In 1934 André Breton wrote an introduction to the catalogue for Brauner’s first Parisian solo
exhibition at the Pierre Gallery.[1] 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’s
play Ubu Roi, "a huge, caricature-like satire of the bourgeoisie".
In 1935, Brauner returned to Bucharest. He joined the ranks of the Romanian Communist Party for a
short while, without a very firm conviction. On 7 April 1935, he opened a new personal exhibition at
the Mozart Galleries. Saşa Pană wrote about it in his autobiographical novel Born in 02:
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, but their colorful taste
is kept in their Romanian language 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 of transition to the art that is to come" (Dolfi Trost,
in Rampa of 14 April 1935). In Cuvântul liber of 20 April 1935, Miron Radu Paraschivescuwrote 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 27 April, he created the illustrations for Gellu Naum’s poetry collections – The Incendiary
Traveler and The Freedom to Sleep on the Forehead.
Exiles[edit]
In 1938, he returned to France. On 28 August, he lost his left eye in a violent argument
between Oscar Domínguez and Esteban Francés. 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 or sometimes chimeras.
He left Paris during Nazi Germany's invasion of France in 1940, together with Pierre Mabille. He
lived for a while in Perpignan, 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
who had taken refuge in Marseille. 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. The
painting is in encaustic on Masonite.[3] After the war, he took part in the Venice Biennale, and
traveled to Italy.
In 1959, he settled in a studio at 72, rue Lepic, in Montmartre.[4] In 1961, he traveled to Italy again. In
the same year, New York City's Bodley Gallery mounted a solo exhibition of Brauner's work. He
settled in Varengeville in Normandy, 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 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 – Paris du 2 juin au 28 septembre 1977).
In 1966, he was chosen to represent France at the Venice Biennale, where an entire hall was
dedicated to him.[5]
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, was a folklorist who later married Lena Constante.

See also[edit]
 Bodley Gallery

References[edit]
1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d "Guggenheim, Collection online". Archived from the
original on 8 June 2013. Retrieved 1 March 2013.
 2. ^ IMDb: Horia Igiroşanu
3. ^ "Prelude to a civilization", encaustic on Masonite, 1954.
renownedart.com
4. ^ Sabine Rewald (1989). Twentieth Century Modern Masters: The
Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
pp. 266–. ISBN 978-0-87099-568-2.
5. ^ "Victor Brauner". Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Retrieved 12
November 2017.

Bibliography[edit]
 Emil Nicolae: Victor Brauner. La izvoarele operei. Prefaţă de Amelia
Pavel. Editura Hasefer: Bucharest, 2004.
 Claus Stephani: Das Bild des Juden in der modernen Malerei. Eine
Einführung. / Imaginea evreului în pictura modernă. Studiu
introductiv. Traducere în limba română de Ion Peleanu.
(Zweisprachige Ausgabe, deutsch-rumänisch. Ediţie bilingvă,
româno-germană.) Editura Hasefer: Bucharest, 2005. ISBN 973-
630-091-9
 Claus Stephani: Einer von ihnen war Victor Brauner. Die großen
Namen der europäischen Avantgarde. In: David. Jüdische
Kulturzeitschrift(Viena), 18. Jg., Nr. 68, April 2006, S. 46–48 (online)

 (in Romanian)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;
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
 (in French) Victor Brauner
 Detail of the painting entitled "Prelude to a Civilization" 1954,
encaustic on Masonite
 Victor Brauner collection at the Israel Museum. Retrieved February
2016.