24. The Relationship [1952]

An essential representative of the international surrealistic movement and the European avant-garde, Victor Brauner designs a deeply personal plastic language to allow us to understand existence itself. Therefore, his work integrates elements originating from his Romanian roots, which in his adopted country, France, the people call "boucler la boucle". Most mystical and esoteric symbols, used as an illustrative tool of surrealistic features in Brauner's works, have their origins in the Moldovan spiritual background of his childhood spent in Piatra-Neamț and directly from his father's occult practices. In the artist's view, creation is a tool for self-analysis and ontological research, located at the intersection of "autobiography, dialectics, mythology, therapy, and ontology", as described by Sarane Alexandrian. The present work belongs to Victor Brauner's period of artistic maturity, after 1938. In this stage, the artist represents his 'obsessions' - the dream, the fantastic, the absence, the poetry, the dreams, the unknown, the occult - in a short series, with works made between 1951-1952, entitled "Retractés". Brauner records his thoughts from that period, nuancing the valences of experienced solitude and reflections on time. The set of compositions denotes, therefore, an intense concern for the human condition, the myth of exile, and the construction of a "personal mythology", where Brauner forces the viewer to confront solitude in the face of primordial myths. "Retractés" differs from Brauner's painting until then and captures the artist's immersion in a hypnotic, deadlocked world. Moreover, the spatial construction differs from the surrealism of the official French group from the early '50s and reminds more of the compositions and the contours of robot-men from Roberto Matta's painting or the elongated figures from Alberto Giacometti's universe. Brauner investigates existential psychoanalysis and renews the representation of skeletal figures that become the painter's obsession prisoners. The term 'retracted' is borrowed by the artist from a morphopsychology work by Louis Corman (1937), a diagnostic tool according to which facial characteristics denote the personality and character of an individual. Thus, from a stylistic point of view, Brauner suggests a human metamorphosis by outlining elongated heads, complemented by sharp features, with round eyes and protected by geometric shapes similar to shields or umbrellas. The emphasis is on the absent or panic-filled gazes of the figures, as we see in other works from the "Retractés" series, such as "Depolarisation of Intimacy II". In this group of works, the chromaticity is reduced to dark tones, intended to contribute to the mysterious and occult atmosphere, referring to the oneiric. The present work, "La relation", represents a symbolic interpretation of the idea of relationship and connection between beings, a central theme in Victor Brauner's ontological approach. The composition presents elongated, ethereal figures, with an almost skeletal aspect, arranged in a dream-like space dominated by green tones. The characters seem engaged in a mysterious interaction, suggested by the proximity and grouping of shapes. Thus, "La relation" reflects Brauner's concern for the relationship between the exterior and the interior, between visible and latent consciousness, both symbolically suggested, where exile and self-analysis become sources of spiritual regeneration. (L.M.) A10 would like to thank Mrs Mihaela Petrov for the kindness of providing us with information about this work.

References

ALEXANDRIAN, Sarane, "Victor Brauner the Illuminator", Cahiers d’Art, 1954 MORANDO, Camille, "Victor Brauner. Inventions and magic", Graphic Art, 2025 MORANDO, Camille, "Victor Brauner. 1903-1966", Bucharest, 2019 SEMIN, Didier, "Victor Brauner and the Surrealist Movement", in "Victor Brauner. Surrealist Hieroglyphs", The Menil Collection, 2001 PETROV, Mihaela, "Victor Brauner pictopoet", Gellu Naum Foundation Bucharest, 2013 PETROV, Mihaela, "Victor Brauner - Retraction or 'withdrawal into oneself'", Old Dilemma, 2023

Dimensions

width 100 cm, height 81 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed and dated bottom left, in brown, "VICTOR BRAUNER, VII, 1952"

Lot.notes

on the back, labels of B.C. Holland, Richard Gray, and Richard L. Feigen galleries.

Dating

1952

PROVENANCE

Millon auction, France, 27.03.2013, lot 211; Sotheby's auction, France, May 30, 2012, lot 40; Sotheby's auction, Great Britain, February 9, 2005, lot 506; past auction annals mention, as provenance, the collection of the Howard Wolfson family from Chicago, as well as a previous European private collection.

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