Victor Brauner moved from Bucharest to Paris in 1930 (the year this painting was made), where he befriended fellow artists Constantin Brancusi, Alberto Giacometti, and Yves Tanguy, and soon joined the Surrealist movement. Brauner, who had been interested in mysticism and the occult from an early age, embraced the themes of eroticism and the unconscious that were central to Surrealism. However, much of his work from the 1930s was more violent in subject matter than that of his peers, often depicting mutilated human bodies. Suicide at Dawn is among his most disturbing paintings of the period.
Wall label, 2021.
