Jules Perahim, Jules Perahim Surrealism Oil Painting on Paper Romanian French Surrealist Figure, 1965

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Jules Perahim (Born: 1914; Bucharest, Romania - Died: 2008; Paris, France) Oil painting on paper depicting a figure with abstract … Read more Jules Perahim (Born: 1914; Bucharest, Romania - Died: 2008; Paris, France) Oil painting on paper depicting a figure with abstract multicolor design. (this might be gouache on paper) Hand signed in pencil lower right and titled "Imitator". Mounted in a gold painted frame with green velvet mat behind glass. Paper measures approx. 14" height x 9 1/2" width. Frame measures approx. 23 1/2" height x 19 1/4" width. Jules Perahim (born Iulis Blumenfeld) was a Romanian artist of Jewish origin. After being associated with Surrealist circles at the beginning of the 1930's, he contributed to the early development of what was to become Socialist Realism. In spite of the success he received during the Communist regime, he grows frustrated by the lack of artistic liberty and, at some point during the 1960's, leaves the country to settle in Paris, France where he continued to paint in surrealist style. In the 1930s, a young generation of Jewish artists appeared on the scene, including Jules Perahim (originally Blumenfeld) and Paul Paun (Zaharia Herşcovici). In 1930, the sixteen-year-old Perahim debuted in the Surrealist magazine Unu (One). That same year, he and the fifteen-year-old Păun, with three other friends, founded the avant-garde magazine Alge (Algae). Inspired by the Dada artists Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Hans Richter, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Tristan Tzara among others. In 1945 Păun was one of the main representatives of the Surrealist group in Bucharest – declared the new capital of Surrealism by André Breton. During the Second World War all progressive groups had to go underground. Afterwards, they enjoyed a short period of relative freedom between Fascism and the establishment of postwar Communism in 1947. Jules Perahim, born Jules Blumenfeld, was a leading member of the Surrealist group in Bucharest. Perahim made his debut in the Surrealist magazine Unu (‘One’). In the years that followed, he and other young artists published a variety of progressive magazines, which sometimes caused great controversy. For example, he and his co-editors were arrested for producing pornography after the publication of Pula (‘The Cock’). On 7 February 1932, Perahim had his first solo exhibition in Bucharest, organized by Marcel Janco. Between 1936 and 1940, he was a regular contributor of socially engaged drawings in the progressive press. When race laws were enacted in 1940 and Perahim was threatened because of his left-wing sympathies, he fled to the Soviet Union. There he was sent on to the Caucasus and Armenia, where he had to perform unskilled labour. Perahim returned to Bucharest in August 1944 and devoted himself to Socialist Realism. From the 1950s onward, he concentrated on book illustrations and set designs for the theatre, two art forms less strictly monitored by the censors. In 1969 he emigrated to France. In Paris, he returned to his earlier, Surrealist style of painting, taking part in many exhibitions in France and elsewhere. Perahim belonged to the Romanian avant-garde circles in which Victor Brauner and Jacques Hérold moved, collaboration with them on UNU. When they settled in Paris, Perahim became the leading representative of pictorial surrealism in Romania. He illustrated the short-lived review Alge, the mouthpiece for a group to which Gherasim Luca also belonged. Perahim’s first exhibition was held in Bucharest in 1932. At that time, he was making paintings based on anatomical contrasts- including L’Antiprophète (1930), the bust of a man whose head is a hand; and La Mitrailleuse (1932), a cruel dialogue between a man and his shadow- though he gradually abandoned this subject matter. In 1933 he created the sets for Brecht’s Arturo Ui, Mayakovsky’s Les Bains and Anski’s Dibbuk. From 1948 to 1956 he was a professor at the Institute of Plastic Arts in Bucharest. He executed a series of engravings, Proverbes (1957), and his talent as an illustrator won him a gold medal at the International Book Show in Leipzig, in 1959. Between 1961 and 1969 he exhibited in various cities in the USSR, as well as in Belgrade, Milan and Tel Aviv, and began making objects in ceramic. Perahim moved to Paris in 1969 and had an important show in 1971 at Galerie François Petit, spontaneously rediscovering the surrealist inspiration of his youth to create such disturbing figures as his “erotic boomerang”- a woman with a fish head (ala Rene Magritte) dancing with an anthropomorphic white bird- or silhouettes made up of spots, and geometric volumes whose attitudes convey aggressive fleeing and defensiveness (ala Salvador dali). Perahim has been exhibited on numerous occasions in group exhibitions at prestigious museums including museum of fun organized by Asahi Shimbun, tokyo, Japan 1984; art and Alchemy, biennale of Venice, Italy 1986; surrealism and love, museum of modern art of the city of Paris 1998; Marcel Duchamp e altri iconoclasti anche, museum of modern art city of Rome 1998. See less