Victor Brauner

Théodore Brauner, Paris (brother of the artist)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in the 1970s

New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Surrealism: Two Private Eyes, 1999, no. 26, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
New York, Ubu Gallery, Victor Brauner, 2003-04, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Paris, Galerie Malingue, Victor Brauner, 2011, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Didier Semin, Victor Brauner, Paris, 1990, illustrated in colour p. 235

The card is laid down on board, which is the artist's original arrangement and is providing stable support. There is no evidence of retouching under ultra-violet light. Apart from some very minor scuffing to the corners of the card and in one area at the upper edge, this work is in very good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although brighter and more vibrant in the original.
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Painted using the extraordinary technique of encaustic painting that Brauner developed at the end of the 1940s, Septième sens is a striking example of the artist’s rich visual language. The two antagonistic male and female figures create a strong symmetry that derives from the hieroglyphs of ancient temples, especially those of ancient South American cultures, whose art provided inspiration for Brauner throughout his career (fig. 1). Marcel Jean suggests that Brauner’s imagery is ‘More cabbalistic than kabalist, and revealing (with an irony that was perhaps involuntary) the ‘spiritualistic’ memories of his childhood, Brauner’s wax paintings borrow their themes from alchemy, from the tarot, from Egyptian designs, and from the codices of ancient Mexico. They also contain an element of anguish and of personal desires: the profile with fixed stare and a bitter expression which reappears so often in Brauner’s waxes is always a self-portrait’ (M. Jean, The History of Surrealist Painting, London, 1960, p. 333).

During the Second World War, as was the case with many of the Surrealist painters with whom he was associated, Brauner left Paris and took refuge in the Basses-Alpes. The privations of his remote location led him to develop highly inventive techniques for creating pictures. Marcel Jean explains: ‘with oil-paints unobtainable, he created paintings in wax, spreading a thin base of melted candle-grease on canvas or cardboard, and engraving on this surface a design accentuated afterwards by means of smoke black, the shapes themselves being coloured by lightly glazed hues’ (ibid., p. 333). The outcome of these experiments can be seen in the richly textured surface and bright colours of Septième sens, in which conventional depth and modelling have been abandoned for bold shapes and alchemical effects.