Browner Josef

Biography of Joseph Brauner

Aaron Chaimowicz, born in 1890 in Berlin to a Jewish family, is also known under the pseudonym "Josef Brauner". He comes from a family with Austrian and Galician origins. His father, also named Aaron, was a scrap metal dealer, and his mother Miriam was born in Galicia (now western Ukraine).
In 1918, Aaron Chaimowicz became a member of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst in Berlin. He was surrounded by friends such as Otto Bartning, Philipp Hansen, and Oskar Shepp, and attended the Staatliches Bauhaus. He took painting and graphic design classes from Vasili Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, and Herbert Bayer, and developed a passion for small totems, objects, and collages, many of which were lost in a fire in his Berlin studio.
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A committed anti-fascist, Chaimowicz took part in the Spanish Civil War as a member of the XI International Brigade, where he defended Madrid and fought in Quinto, Teruel and Belchite. He was awarded the Republican Order "El Distintivo del Valor" for his actions. After the defeat of the Republicans, he went into exile in France, where he was interned but managed to escape. He returned to Germany, then under the Nazi regime, and continued the anti-fascist struggle in hiding until the end of the Second World War.
In the late 1940s, Chaimowicz emigrated to the United States to be reunited with his sister Ruth, who had been living there since 1939. He found her again in 1950 in Boston, where he settled near her and lived until his death in 1973. His career was marked by his political and artistic commitment, as well as by his resilience in the face of adversity.