Composition

Victor Brauner was born in 1903 in Piatra Neamt, a small town in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania. He studied painting at the Bucharest School of Fine Arts (1919-1921) and at the private school of H. Igiroseanu. In 1924, at the age of 21, he held his first solo exhibition in Bucharest. He was involved in artistic publishing: creator of the magazine 75PH in which he published the text 'Manifeste de la Pictopoesie', editor of the international magazine Punct, where he published constructivist works, collaborator of the dadaist-oriented magazine Unu (1928). In 1933 he settled in Paris, where in 1933 Tanguy brought him to the famous café in Place Blanck, a meeting place for surrealists. He immediately associated himself with the surrealist movement, forming his own personal idiom. Between 1935 and 1938 he resided in Bucharest, where he tried to maintain interest in Surrealism in artistic circles. On his return to Paris in 1938, he lost his left eye in a fight in which he was a witness. In several works from 1930-1938 the artist, perhaps with an obsessive premonition, portrays himself with his eye plucked out or with his eyes closed. During the war Brauner found refuge in a small village in the Alps, where, while reading German Romantics, he was initiated into the world of alchemy, Tarot and Cavalla, from which he drew his subjects, giving his works a strong esoteric content. He participated in the exhibition Surrealism in 1947. A year later he held his first major exhibition of 100 works, while at the same time definitively cutting his ties with the surrealists. He collaborated with Matta and began a period of solipsism and a return to the ego, during which the artist autobiographed himself through imaginary series of works. In the 1960s he returned to more simplified forms and in 1966 he represented France at the Venice Biennale. He died the same year.