Personnage dans un paysage surréaliste

Drawing inspiration from mythology, folklore, and esotericism, the Romanian-born Brauner produced a personal and unique body of work populated by chimerical figures and hybrid creatures. His father, intensely passionate about the spiritual realm, exposed him to theories of mysticism from an early age and would often sneak him into séances as a child. This encouraged Brauner to develop a strong interest in the occult, an enthusiasm that was only heightened by his study of tarot cards, ancient mythology, and different world-cultures and religions. He produced images rich with symbolic content and filled with fantastical beings realised in brightly coloured, simplified forms. In the mid-1930s Brauner reached the height of his association with the Surrealist movement through his friendship with Yves Tanguy, whose studio occupied the same building as Brauner’s. It was Tanguy who brokered an introduction with André Breton, who, captivated with Brauner's work, propelled him into the centre of the group. Personnage dans un paysage surréaliste, bisected by planes of colour, is visually evocative of the surrealist game cadavre exquis in which a sentence or drawing is composed by several artists, each ignorant of the preceding collaboration. An enigmatic dark shape emerges, superseding the borders of colour and dominating the foreground.