The first Victor Brauner retrospective in Romania was opened recently at the same time as ‘Timisoara 2023, European Capital of Culture’.
In the Baroque Palace of the National Museum of Art Timișoara, the exhibition proposes over 100 paintings, drawings, sculptures, book illustrations, and documents spanning Brauner’s entire career as a surrealist artist of Romanian origin.
“Timișoara 2023–European Capital of Culture” represents a complex cultural program that aims to transform citizens, artists, and cultural operators into relevant actors in its implementation and the city’s long-term development. Thus marking 2023 as a truly remarkable year for the designated capital of culture and Romania, showcasing more than 2,500 artists and about 30 events per week. The program was coordinated by the Timișoara City Hall, the Timiș County Council, and the Ministry of Culture, via the Timișoara 2023 Association. The program’s projects were developed by various public, private and independent cultural institutions of the city and the country.
This reemphasizes the city’s vocation as a privileged host of the arts. In this sense, opening the European capital of culture became a celebration of the entire city.
Curated by Camille Morando, this first retrospective of the artist in Romania – “Victor Brauner: Inventions and Magic” (February 17–May 28), proposes over 100 paintings, drawings, sculptures, book illustrations, and documents spanning Brauner’s entire career as a surrealist artist of Romanian origin. The event is co-organized by the Centre Pompidou, the Timișoara National Art Museum, the Art Encounters Foundation, and the French Institute in Romania, with the support of the Comité Brauner and the Fondation du Judaïsme Français.
Born in 1903 in Piatra Neamț (Moldova), Victor Brauner actively participated from the 1920s in the Bucharest avant-garde of which he became one of the main representatives. His conversion to Surrealism took place gradually between the first stay (1925-1926) and the second stay in Paris (1930-1935) of the artist, who joined the movement of André Breton in the autumn of 1933. Following an accident in 1938, Brauner lost an eye and became, for the surrealists, the “visionary” painter, capable of premonition. This enucleation had been painted in his Self-Portrait in 1931, seven years earlier.
Victor Brauner, who settled permanently in France in 1938, is one of the greatest artists of surrealism. He is also an artist apart in the story of art with an original work, complex, erudite, full of humor and inventions, and nourished by his Romanian origins, the most secret esotericisms, German Romantics, parietal art and primitive arts.
This exhibition benefits from an exceptional loan from the Centre Pompidou (Paris) with about forty works, which should be completed by a dozen works from the museums of Marseille and Saint-Etienne, as well as about twenty works preserved in Romania in museums and private collections.
This retrospective will thus be able to present the entire career of the artist, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and his creation according to various media (painting, drawing, object, sculpture). Even if some of Brauner’s artworks (especially of the beginning of his production) are present in museum and private collections in Romania, Brauner, recognized internationally (in France, Germany, Italy, the United States, …), is still too little known in his native country. That is why this retrospective – the first exhibition dedicated to this great artist in a museum in Romania – will be a very important event.
In the eleven halls located on the second floor of the Baroque Palace of the National Museum of Art Timișoara, the exhibition presents nearly seventy works by Victor Brauner, from the 1920s to the 1960s, according to the different media of his production (painting, drawing, engraving, sculpture). The beginnings of the artist’s creation are notably shown thanks to emblematic pieces from museum and private collections in Romania, supplemented by an exceptional loan from the Centre Pompidou (around forty works, as well as around twenty archival documents), and loans from the museums of Saint-Étienne and Marseille, exhibited for the first time in Romania.
The life and work of Victor Brauner are intrinsically linked, which is why the proposed route is essentially chronological. Each hall presents a text and most often the reproduction of a portrait of the artist, such as that by Man Ray (circa 1933-1934, Paris, Centre Pompidou).