Victor Brauner
Suicide at Dawn1930

On view:

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Oil painting of two intertwined nude figures — one pale, one crimson red — hovering above a black ground under a dark gray sky, signed 'Victor Brauner 1930'

Artist or Maker: Victor Brauner
Romania, active France, 1903-1966
Title: Suicide at Dawn
Place Made: Romania
Date Made: 1930
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 40 1/2 × 34 1/2 × 2 1/2 in. (102.87 × 87.63 × 6.35 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Robert and Mary Looker, Lynda and Stewart Resnick, Max and Eleanor Baril Family Trust, Helena and Boyd Krout, Alice and Nahum Lainer, Sheila and Wally Weisman, Herta and Paul Amir, Abby and Alan D. Levy, Sandra and Jacob Y. Terner, and Bill and Maria Bell through the 1996 Collectors Committee, and gift of Richard L. Feigen, New York
Accession Number: AC1996.18.1
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Modern Art
Curatorial Notes: 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.
Provenance: The artist (1903-1966). Nicolas Lauze; sold in 1995 to Richard L. Feigen (1930-2021); [Richard L. Feigen & Co., New York]; sold in 1996 to LACMA.
Selected Bibliography: Gifts from Mary and Robert Looker, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, December 2017. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2017.

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