Victor Brauner

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, from Egyptian to Aztec, Native American to Oceanic, Jewish to Hindu, to name only a few. In "Victor Brauner: Surrealist Hieroglyphs", Didier Semin, a pre-eminent Brauner scholar, clarifies Brauner's involvement with Surrealism and his sui generis interpretation of the movement. Margaret Montagne, author of the forthcoming Brauner catalogue raisonne, addresses the artist's use of psychoanalytical and arcane references to explore the motif of the double. Conservator Bradford Epley publishes his 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 innovative poet and critic Parker Tyler is again published as the foreword to this monograph. This text features the work and life of Victor Brauner, an artist who blended ideas from his Romanian homeland with forms and shapes of the Western avant-garde. The book places his "ouevre" into the context of famous artist colleagues such as Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy.