Composition with Portrait 1935

Victor Brauner made this arresting oil painting, "Composition with Portrait," in France, but the Romanian-born artist was part of a larger movement of exiles and expatriates following the rise of Fascism in Europe. Brauner became a member of the Surrealist group in Paris in 1933, and it's clear to see the style here, in this grotesque, almost cartoonish portrait. The face is distorted, exaggerated, made of fleshy tones that contrast with the piercing, bulging eyes. He returned again and again to the motif of eyes, perhaps because he lost one of his own in a violent episode in 1938. Surrealism was always interested in the power of the irrational, the subconscious, and the dreamlike, but as the 1930s wore on, artists like Brauner began to infuse their imagery with a more explicitly political charge, an anxiety about the rise of authoritarianism, and the fragility of the human body in the face of mechanized war. Art historians can see that the study of this period draws on resources from the history of politics, popular culture, and the history of the body itself.