As an early adherent of the Surrealist movement, Victor Brauner actively explored the realm of dreams and the unconscious, with an emphasis on the occult and mystical. Both in content and in style, his art represents a remarkably fertile fusion of wide-ranging world cultures, mythologies, and religious beliefs, fiom Egyptian to Aztec,Native American to Oceanic, Jewish to Hindu, to name only a few.

As an early adherent of the Surrealist movement, Victor Brauner actively explored the realm of dreams and the unconscious, with an emphasis on the occult and mystical. Both in content and in style, his art represents a remarkably fertile fusion of wide-ranging world cultures, mythologies, and religious beliefs, fiom Egyptian to Aztec,Native American to Oceanic, Jewish to Hindu, to name only a few.

The work of Brauner and its position in the history of art comprise a story replete with paradox. He was a respected and integral member of both the 1920s Romanian avant-garde and, beginning in the 1930s, the Paris Surrealist circle. Yet the history of modernist art often minimizes or neglects his idiosyncratic approach to Surrealism.An erudite man of high intellect, Brauner made paintings that often have a naTve, folk art quality. Primarily focusing on figuration whether human, animal, occult, or mythological beings--his works conversely are often realized in boldly colored abstract shapes and decorative patterning. An undeterred experimentel; he employed wax and encaustic media techniques of his own invention. While his paintings often seem thematically simple, even invoking images from a child's storybook, they are in fact underpinned by an intricate lexicon of symbolism and archetypes. Bringing to mind the cave drawings of Lascaux, the pictograms of North American cliff dwellers,or the carvings in Mayan ruins, Brauner's work was propelled by a search for a universality of spirit.

In Victor Brazmer: Surrealist Hieroglyphs, Didier Semin, a leading Brauner scholaJ; has clarified Brauner's involvement with Surrealism and his suigeneris interpretation of the movement. Margaret Montagne,author of the forthcoming Brauner catalogue raisonne, has addressed the artist's use of psychoanalytical and arcane references to explore the motif of the double. Conservator Bradford Epley publishes new research on Brauner's revolutionary use of wax as a medium. Susan Davidson's introduction provides an insightful history of John and Dominique de Menils' patronage of Brauner and the reception of his art in America. In addition, the little-known, first critical English text on Brauner (1949) by the poet and critic Parker Tyler is again published as the foreword to this monograph.

Lenders to the Exhibition

Ned Rifkin  Preface

Susan Davidson Introduction: "Vivifying Presence"

Parker Tyler Foreword

Didier Semin Victor Brauner and the Surrealist Movement

Margaret Montagne The Myth of the Double

Bradford Epley Victor Brauner's Use of Wax

 Plates compiled by

Susan Davidson  148  Chronology

Selected Bibliography

Index