Victor Brauner in Monaco: “The Magical Adventure” at Villa Paloma until 3 January 2027

The Nouveau Musée National de Monaco brings the enigmatic and visionary world of Victor Brauner (1903–1966) to Villa Paloma with the exhibition Victor Brauner, The Magical Adventure, on view until 3 January 2027.

Curated by Camille Morando, curator responsible for the documentation of the modern collections at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the exhibition brings together around 60 works, including drawings, paintings and sculptures, spanning the entire course of the artist’s career, from the 1920s to the 1960s.

A particularly significant aspect of the exhibition is the provenance of the works: the entire selection comes from a private Monegasque collection and is being shown to the public for the first time.

Victor Brauner, an artist between Surrealism, myth and esotericism

The exhibition takes visitors into an artistic universe that is difficult to define within a single movement. Born in Romania and shaped by the vibrant avant-garde scene in Bucharest, Brauner later moved to Paris, where he encountered some of the key figures of 20th-century art.

During his time in Paris, he met artists including Robert Delaunay and Marc Chagall, became a friend of Constantin Brâncuși, and in 1933 was introduced by Yves Tanguy to André Breton, bringing him into the orbit of the Surrealist movement.

Although close to Breton’s circle, Brauner maintained a strong creative independence. His work developed through a constant interplay of Surrealism, symbolism, imagination, spirituality, irony and references to ancient cultures.

For the artist, every painting was a new exploration: an adventure through which he could create his own personal mythology.

An “inner portrait” of the artist

Camille Morando conceived the exhibition as an inner portrait of Victor Brauner, creating a journey that gradually leads visitors into his imagination.

Eyes, hybrid creatures, fantastic animals, distorted human figures, symbols and inventions populate the rooms of Villa Paloma. It is a world in which dreams and the absurd enter everyday life, while elements drawn from distant cultures and civilisations are reinterpreted through a free and visionary imagination.

One of the most recurring symbols is the eye, an almost obsessive presence in Brauner’s work. Its significance also has an autobiographical dimension: in 1938, the artist lost the use of his left eye following a fight.

In Brauner’s work, the gaze thus becomes simultaneously a symbol, a premonition and a means of communicating with the viewer.

Victor Brauner’s fantastic bestiary

Animals occupy a central place in the artist’s imagination. Dogs, fish and other creatures become ways of exploring the relationship between human beings, nature and the different forms of life.

Brauner’s hybrid figures appear to come from a timeless mythological universe in which human and animal elements merge, while references to ancient civilisations, distant traditions and dream imagery coexist.

This imaginative freedom reflects a vision of life as a continuum linking all living forms and contributes to making Brauner’s work open to multiple interpretations.

War, exile and new techniques

Brauner’s biography is deeply connected to his artistic research. War, the Nazi occupation and exile marked some of the most difficult years of his life, but they also became periods of intense experimentation.

After fleeing Paris and living underground, the artist had to work with scarce materials. He also used wax from candles, developing new forms of expression and experimenting with techniques such as encaustic and sgraffito.

The result was an original visual language in which images seem to be constantly transforming.

Egyptian hieroglyphs, pre-Columbian codes, tarot cards and esoteric symbols entered his visual repertoire, without ever being used according to a rigid system.

Ten African and Oceanian art objects

Alongside Brauner’s works, the exhibition presents ten objects of African and Oceanian art that belonged to the artist himself.

Kept in his studio, these objects reveal the importance that non-European cultures had in his thinking and imagination. They are on loan from the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole, to which they were donated by the artist’s wife.

Within the exhibition, they create connections between different cultural worlds and evoke the relationship between human beings, objects, beliefs and invisible forces that runs through Brauner’s work.

An immersive exhibition design at Villa Paloma

The experience of the exhibition is enhanced by the scenographic design created by Christophe Martin.

The walls, ceilings and floors of each section share the same colour palette, creating strongly immersive environments. In this setting, the works appear almost suspended in space, encouraging a more intimate and engaging encounter with Brauner’s universe.

The exhibition also includes archival material, photographs, letters and exhibition projects, as well as a film that allows visitors to hear the artist’s voice and explore key moments of his life.

Victor Brauner exhibition in Monaco: practical information

Victor Brauner, The Magical Adventure is on view at Villa Paloma – Nouveau Musée National de Monaco until 3 January 2027.

The exhibition offers an opportunity to rediscover one of the most original and difficult-to-classify artists of the 20th-century avant-garde. Through paintings, drawings, sculptures and objects from the artist’s personal collection, visitors are invited into a world where autobiography, myth, irony, dreams and esotericism meet.

The project is accompanied by a catalogue published by Hatje Cantz, offering further insight into Victor Brauner’s life and work.

Rather than providing a single key with which to interpret his art, The Magical Adventure invites visitors to follow their own questions and allow themselves to be guided by a sense of wonder in front of an artistic universe in constant transformation.