Biographie

1903–1966

Born in 1903 in Roma­nia, Vic­tor Brauner was the elder broth­er of the Sur­re­al­ist pho­tog­ra­ph­er Théodore Brauner. Being a stu­dent at the Bucharest Fine Art School dur­ing 1919–1921, Vic­tor Brauner was an ear­ly par­tic­i­pant in the buzzing art scene of the time.

At the occa­sion of the first exhi­bi­tion of his works in Bucharest in 1924, Brauner co-edit­ed with the poet Ilar­ie Voron­co an edi­tion of the Dada mag­a­zine, enti­tled 75 HP (Horse­pow­er), in which he pub­lished his so-called ‘pic­to-poet­ry’ man­i­festo. His jux­ta­po­si­tion of let­ters, images and colours cre­at­ed visu­al poems influ­enced by the con­tem­po­rary research­es of Futur­ism, Dada and Constructivism.
Dur­ing his first vis­it to Paris in 1925, Brauner dis­cov­ered Sur­re­al­ism. He joined the move­ment imme­di­ate­ly when he set­tled in the French cap­i­tal in 1932. Brauner was par­tic­u­lar­ly close to the painter Yves Tan­guy. Brauner con­tributed to the Sur­re­al­ist dis­play at the 6th edi­tion of the ‘Salon des Surindépen­dants’ in 1933. The fol­low­ing year, the Pierre gallery host­ed his first one-man show, for which André Bre­ton wrote the pref­ace of the catalogue.
In 1935 Brauner returned to Bucharest for three years. Upon his return to Paris Brauner par­tic­i­pat­ed in the 1938 and 1939 edi­tions of the ‘Salon des Surindépen­dants’ with a series enti­tled ‘Chimères’. As a com­mu­nist Jew, Brauner was forced to choose exile in the South of France dur­ing the Vichy rule of Nazi occu­pied France. Towards the end of the Sec­ond World War, Brauner went into total hid­ing and worked on a series of wax draw­ings and exper­i­ment­ed with sculp­ture; the lack of avail­able mate­ri­als pushed him to impro­vise and innovate.
In 1947, Brauner par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Inter­na­tion­al Sur­re­al­ist Exhi­bi­tion held at the Maeght gallery, where he showed ‘Loup-Table’, one of his best-know works. Brauner’s indi­vid­u­al­ism how­ev­er pushed the Sur­re­al­ists to exclude him from the group in 1948. Brauner con­tin­ued to devel­op his research into a new pic­to­r­i­al lan­guage which revealed the illusory.

Brauner left France for Switzer­land where he suc­cumbed to a long ill­ness in March 1966. He was buried at the Mont­martre Ceme­tery in Paris. In 1996, the Cen­tre Georges Pom­pi­dou host­ed an impor­tant ret­ro­spec­tive to this major fig­ure of Sur­re­al­ism, free inven­tor and inde­pen­dent spir­it. In 2020 the ‘Musée d’Art Mod­erne de Paris’ host­ed a one-man show enti­tled Vic­tor Brauner. Je suis le rêve. Je suis l’inspiration.