Victor Brauner, a great Romanian first

Will Timi?oara take advantage of its title as European Capital of Culture in 2023 to raise its profile? While Veszprém in Hungary seems to be banking on concerts and Greece's Elefsina is more interested in restoring its community through its Transitional Mysteries, the cosmopolitan city in western Romania may well recall that it was a privileged point of contact with the rest of the world during the Soviet era. Alongside a retrospective of Bucharest-born, London-bound Paul Neagu and before an exhibition devoted to a Constantin Brâncu?i who is as much Romanian as he is universal, it is therefore the work largely associated with the surrealism of Victor Brauner that constitutes one of the highlights. All the more so because the man who trained in Bucharest and left the country without return in 1938, after two important stays in Paris, has never benefited from a major exhibition there. Covering the whole of his career, in which the figures of chimeras abound, this exhibition could not have been held without the active participation of the Centre Pompidou, which lent some forty works.

Tom Laurent

exhibition's website