Jules Perahim

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Jules Perahim, born Iuliş 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 to 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.