Painter of Romanian origin, Iulis Blumenfeld, known as Jules Perahim, born on 24 May 1914 in Bucharest, died in 2008.
Life
From a well-to-do Bucharest family, Jules Perahim trained with Costin Petrescu and Nicolae Vermont, professors at the National School of Fine Arts in Bucharest. In the early 1930s he adopted his pseudonym, which combines a gallicised first name with a surname translated into Hebrew.
A figure of the Romanian avant-garde of the 1930s, he contributed to the nonconformist reviews Unu, connected with Victor Brauner, and Alge, which he co-founded with Ghérasim Luca; his work then shifted from Dada towards Surrealism. In 1938, on his way to Paris, he stopped in Prague, where the Czech avant-garde organised a solo exhibition for him; the Nazi advance prevented him from continuing his journey.
After the war, and above all from 1950, he conformed to Socialist Realism, then devoted himself to the decorative arts, theatre design and book illustration, while secretly pursuing a personal body of work. He also edited the review Arta plastică. In 1969 he left Romania with his wife, the art historian Marina Vanci-Perahim, and settled in Paris.
The work
In Paris Perahim devoted himself entirely to painting. His work, poetic, enigmatic and full of humour, engages with historical elements and mythological figures. With Victor Brauner, he is among the most discussed figures of Romanian Surrealist painting.
Édouard Jaguer devoted a monograph to him, Perahim.