Victor BRAUNER – Manifesto letter on the place of man in time.

Victor Brauner (1903.1966)

Autographed letter signed to Maurice Toesca.

One page in-4°.

Binder holes, adhesive and defects in left margins.

Paris. August 3, 1945

"Men also want to ignore the fact that the future is unknown; they are afraid of the unknown because it is clear proof of their cowardice."

A very beautiful manifesto-letter concerning the place of man in time.

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“ Prinner showed me your letter. This feeling, which a hermetic vision of the world makes through an invisible spiderweb, which is THE precious and sensitive LINK and which is indisputably the only valid and stimulating one. How I understand your message and how I, in turn, feel that we are, during these long years where reality flows by with all its train of habits, which only confirm its path towards the inevitable death of the values ​​that arise from a rationalism without outcome [sic] , on the lookout, waiting for this element [sic] of attachment, thirsty and functional like a “praying mantis” the encounter with this event, transposed into a MAN, who, like you, an isolated island that exists with certainty, but which only chance, and here its enormous sumptuousness of the unforeseen, can give its vivifying meaning.”

We sense, without being able to escape the laws of doubt, that there is an anatomy of affinity, as if there were a graph where we can see the nerve centers, which will be those that we must encounter throughout life.

The laws governing these encounters are certainly willfully ignored by current methods of thought, which seek only to present a vision of a future earthly paradise. But people also choose to ignore the fact that the future is unknown; they fear the unknown because it is clear proof of their cowardice. This is why, from criticism, self-criticism, and over-criticism, springs the river of justifications, which is yet another of the most remarkable signs of petrification—a kind of "soft petrification," where fundamental anxieties—those of life or death, those of the unconscious or of chance, must be eliminated through compromise.

This is to express my joy that my name also appears on your sensitive triangle, fountain of contemplation (Brassaï, Prinner, and myself), and again to tell you that at the very moment, and perhaps even before, your appearance in my life, the rainbow at the other end, was destined for you, the foundation of friendship. Victor Brauner