Suicide at Dawn
Suicide at Dawn presents a double figure literally, and fatally, divided against itself. The image floats against a black void, with bands of mottled gray above and below. Light falls on the left side of the pale figure. But highlights on the red figure suggest a light source to the right. The picture has no consistent perspective, no up or down, no sense of depth.
The Romanian artist Victor Brauner painted Suicide at Dawn in 1930, after fleeing to Paris to escape the rise of fascism in his home country. It may represent the artist’s conflicted self, or the struggle between life and death. It also recalls Romanian folk tales in which a hermit communes with his evil spirit double.
In Paris, Brauner met André Breton and other painters in the Surrealist movement, whose work he knew already. Works like Suicide at Dawn show that he had already achieved the Surrealists’ goal: to give visual expression to the inner reality of dreams, fantasy, and the unconscious.
