Victor Brauner: Exhibition highlighting work of Romanian Surrealist painter opens at National Art Museum in Bucharest

The exhibition Victor Brauner. Between the oneiric and the occult, aiming to highlight the "original character and local sources" in the work of the Surrealist artist, is scheduled to open at the National Art Museum of Romanian (MNAR) on December 1.

The exhibition, which also looks at Brauner's contribution to the Surrealist movement, is open until April 30 at MNAR's National Gallery.

The show will feature paintings and drawings from the collections of MNAR, Musee National d'Art Moderne - Centre Pompidou, Musee d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Etienne Metropole, Musee d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg, Visual Art Museum in Galaţi, and Ţara Crişurilor Museum in Oradea.

Works from private collections are also included, namely from those of Octavian Brândeu, Gheorghe Burtea, Beatrix and Christian Derveloy, Damian Florea, Adrian Năstase, Andrei Năstase, Mihnea Năstase, Cristinel Popa, Jean-Michel Runacher, and Anca Vlad.

The exhibition will also include various books, newspapers, and avant-garde magazines illustrated by the artist from the collections of the National Library of Romania, Bucharest Metropolitan Library, the Central University Library, Lucian Blaga Library in Cluj-Napoca, in addition to documents from Romania's National Archives, photos and documentary films from the inter-war period from the Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum.

The section Les illuminations successives from Fabrice Maze's 2004 film Victor Brauner - Le grand illuminateur totemique is included in the show.

Victor Brauner was born in 1903 in Piatra Neamţ, in today's northeastern Romania, where his family lived in 1913. After periods in Vienna and Brăila, his family settled in Bucharest in 1918, where Brauner attended the courses of the Fine Arts School from 1919 to 1921.

In 1923, he started collaborating with notable local avant-garde magazines (Contimporanul, Punct, Integral, Unu, Urmuz) and took part in exhibitions alongside Marcel Iancu, M.H. Maxy, Hans Mattis-Teutsch, Miliţa Petraşcu, and more. Together with Ilarie Voronca, he established the Dada- and Futurist-inspired magazine 74 HP.

In 1932, he joined the Surrealist movement led by Andre Breton and participated in several of the group's exhibitions. In 1938, he moved to Paris, without returning to Romania until his death in 1966.

MNAR has eight paintings and two drawings by Brauner in its collection.

This is the second exhibition on the work of Brauner that opens this year in the country, following the one in Timișoara earlier this year. Victor Brauner: Inventions and Magic was open between February 17 and May 28 at the Timișoara National Museum of Art as part of the city's European Capital of Culture program. 

(Photo: Multipedia2014/ Dreamstime)

[email protected]