Victor Brauner
Le Chevalier de Glace
Date 1938
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 54 x 65 cm
Inventory ID UID 102-74
74.jpg
On a brown and green plane, a woman is prominent on a chair, encircling with her legs a half-fantastical, half-skeletal character. The two figures are wrapped in a transparent white veil. The sexual symbolism is ambiguous: the woman seems to be attracting and repelling the intruder at the same time. This work belongs to a series of paintings dating from the end of 1938 to the end of 1939, which often possess the names of lycanthropes or chimeras, in accordance with his themes. They differ from earlier paintings in their more restricted chromatic range, the reduced sharpness of the drawing, and the slightly dissipated perspective. The painter is perhaps expressing his own meandering during his convalescence after losing his eye and the departure of his wife. AC
B. C: Holland Gallery, Chicago; Richard L. Feigen Gallery, Chicago; Cazeau-Beraudière gallery, Paris; acquired in 1997.