Victor Brauner

It will include about 80 paintings, as well as a large number of drawings, sculptures, and objects. The exhibition will be presented at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, in the autumn of 2020.

Born in Romania, Victor Brauner was involved in the ferment of avant-garde artistic activity in the 1920s, (expressionism, Dadaist constructivism, etc.), before drifting towards a dream-like style of painting and then joining the surrealist movement in Paris in 1933. He embraced surrealism’s pet themes (eroticism, random objectivity, the interpretation of dreams, and the occult sciences), bringing a distinctive and mysterious character to the movement.

During the war, Brauner’s status as a foreign Jew, opposed to all forms of totalitarianism, forced him to go into hiding in the South of France. Ironically, this period of fear, loneliness and poverty, during which Brauner changed his style and techniques, as well as discovering an enthusiasm for the Esoteric, Kabbalah and alchemy, turned out to be a time of immense creativity.

Back in Paris in 1945, he was thought of as a leader of the younger generation of post-war surrealists. Other influences, combining psychoanalysis, primitivism, archaism and myths, began to emerge. His fundamental quest was for a new, primordial language that would show, not reality, but the invisible and innermost forces of the world.

CURATORS

Sophie Krebs, general curator of collections, Jeanne Brun and Camille Morando, curatorial advisers