Le poète assassiné

Victor Brauner started experimenting with the encaustic technique during the Second World War, probably out of necessity due to the scarcity of materials available to him during his self-imposed exile in a small village in the Pyrenees during the conflict. This ancient artistic process, in which wax and pigment are combined, melted and then fused to their support, pushed Brauner to explore a new hermetic mythology. ‘While I was executing my wax paintings,’ the artist wrote, ‘I felt I was performing the great spagyric art,’ invoking the term that the fifteenth-century occultist Paracelsus used to refer to alchemy (quoted in Victor Brauner, Miti, presagi, simboli, exh. cat., Musei e Cultura, Lugano, 1985, p. 24). Brauner took a strong interest in Paracelsus’s writings, as well as those by Cornelius Agrippa, and kept a selection of books on the occult in his personal library. ‘Painting,’ Brauner declared in 1956, ‘is an initiatory technique that pushes me into my secret and interior zones and makes me discover important things about myself’ (quoted in ibid., p. 84). Brauner’s work from this period focused increasingly on totemic fantastical beings and creatures, realised in brightly coloured, simplified forms, reminiscent of ancient cave paintings or graffiti. In Le poète assassiné, Brauner depicts a complex, three-headed deity, flanked by a coterie of cosmic signs, esoteric symbols and mysterious utensils, that suggest an otherworldly language and culture. Influenced by non-European art, these works offer a captivating glimpse into Brauner’s highly personal lexicon of mysterious characters, whose arcane powers and individual natures, remain beyond our grasp.