Victor Brauner

Victor Brauner
Victor Brauner, c. 1960
Born	15 June 1903 Piatra Neamț, Romania
Died	12 March 1966 Paris, France
Education	Bucharest National University of Arts
Movement	Surrealism

Victor Brauner (Romanian: [ˈviktor ˈbrawner], also spelled Viktor Brauner; 15 June 1903 – 12 March 1966) was a French Romanian sculptor and painter of surrealistic images.

He was born in Piatra Neamț, Romania, the son of a Jewish timber manufacturer who subsequently settled in Vienna with his family for a few years. It is there that young Victor attended elementary school. When his family returned to Romania in 1914, he continued his studies at the Evangelical school in Brăila. His interests revolved around zoology during that period.

He attended the National School of Fine Arts in Bucharest (1916–1918) and Horia Igiroşanu private school of painting. He visited Fălticeni and Balcic, and started painting landscapes in the manner of Paul Cézanne. Then, as he testified himself, he went through all the stages: "Dadaist, Abstractionist, Expressionist".

On 26 September 1924, the Mozart Galleries in Bucharest hosted his first personal exhibition. In that period he met poet Ilarie Voronca, together with whom he founded the 75HP magazine. It was in this magazine that Brauner published the manifesto The Pictopoetry and the article The Surrationalism. He painted and exhibited Christ at the Cabaret (in the manner of George Grosz) and The Girl in the Factory (in the manner of Hodler). He participated to the Contimporanul exhibition in November 1924.