114. The relationship [1952]

A representative essential of the international surrealist movement and the European avant-garde, Victor Brauner creates a deeply personal plastic language to allow us to understand existence itself. Thus, his work integrates elements from his Romanian roots, which in his adoptive country, France, the people call "boucler la boucle". Most of the mystical and esoteric symbols, used as an illustrative instrument of the surrealist traits in Brauner's works, originate in the Moldovan spiritual background of the childhood spent in Piatra-Neamț and directly from the occult practices of his father. In the artist's view, creation is a tool of self-analysis and ontological research, located at the intersection of "autobiography, dialectics, mythology, therapy, and ontology", as Sarane Alexandrian described it. This 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, poetry, dreams, the unknown, the occult - in a short series, with works made between 1951-1952, entitled "Retractés". Brauner records his thoughts from that period, shading the feelings of lived solitude and reflections on time. Therefore, the set of compositions denotes an intense preoccupation with the human condition, the myth of exile and the construction of a "personal mythography", where Brauner forces the viewer to confront solitude in the face of primal myths. "Retractés" differs from Brauner's painting up to that point and captures the artist's immersion in a hypnotic world, without a way out. Moreover, the spatial construction differs from the surrealism of the official French group at the beginning of the '50s and reminds, rather, of the compositions and the contours of robot-men in Roberto Matta's painting or the elongated figures in Alberto Giacometti's universe. Brauner observes existential psychoanalysis and renews the representation of skeletal figures who become prisoners of the painter's obsessions. The term 'retracted' is borrowed by the artist from a work of morphopsychology 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 the metamorphosis of the human by outlining elongated heads, completed by sharp features, with round eyes and protected by geometrical shapes similar to shields or umbrellas. The emphasis falls on the absent or panicked gazes of the figures, as we observe in other works from the "Retractés" series, such as "Depolarization of Intimacy II". In this group of works, the color spectrum is limited to dark tones, meant to contribute to the mysterious and occult atmosphere, which refers to the dreamlike. This 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 comprises elongated, ethereal figures, almost skeletal in appearance, arranged in a dreamlike space dominated by green tones. The characters seem engaged in a mysterious interaction, suggested by the proximity and grouping of the shapes. Thus, "La relation" reflects Brauner's preoccupation with 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 extends its thanks to Mrs. Mihaela Petrov for the courtesy by which she provided 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"

Research information

This lot, awarded in auction no. 629/2026, is put back into forced sale due to the initiation of classification procedure by the Ministry of Culture.

Lot.notes

On the reverse, gallery labels from B.C. Holland, Richard Gray, and Richard L. Feigen.

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; the annals of past auctions mention, as provenance, the Howard Wolfson family collection from Chicago, as well as a previous private European collection.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

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