Romanian Masters

ION ANDREESCU

4/14/2015

The sensitive painter of the melancholic nature

Nature is the parent of all impressions and changes of mood. There has never been a place better suited for cradling the human thoughts than nature itself, wrapped in its lustful shades resembling a cloak of ages. Masterful as it might be, the almighty sorceress has always retraced every single step that our stream of consciousness could take towards the boundless analysis of ancestral heritage. From the encounter of mankind and nature, a new creature comes to life. She is limitless in her ways and actions, conspicuous though peculiar, although She offers mental shelter to the undecided. Yet, the inamorata is tight-fisted at times. She indulges in her lovers' painful toil of constant rediscovery, luring them every now and then towards the bottom of equilibrium after She cuts the ribbon that links the outer dimension and the inner pit of self-management. One might not want to intrude into the blossoming garden of the Nature, for She can prick the mind with invisible thorns springing from the very core of the path one would choose to walk on. How could one live surrounded by the atoms made colour and mellow fabrics, mustering endless waves of creation? I dare say, by reenacting the Nature's own playful drama. The best means of acquiring that should be available at one's discretion as long as daring people make sure to mold the visible creature at the moment when She spreads Her crude essence. An artist makes a perfect lover. Art redefines the unseen trapped into the Womb by using the stamina that strokes of paint could solely reveal.

Ion Andreescu was one one of the lovers whose creative tentacles managed to spread over the body of the Mistress and impregnate Her with his own colourful revolution. By mentioning colourful, I do not mean to portray splashes of jolly paste dancing like princesses on the riverbank, enshrouded by night. We want to emphasize here the variety of emotions involved in the creative process. One can see colour in their own manner, one can define colour by the most extravagant terms and endow these with the most varied meanings. In order to defamiliarize a concept, one has to strip it first and clad it back again in a different attire. A fresh start brings a brand new vista, forging the present into a state of mind with a genuine flavour. Iron turns to gold when filtered through the sieve in the artistic eye, while drops of bare inspiration drip onto the the vial-like canvas of the alchemist.

There isn't much to be written about Ion Andreescu. His existence was short, though not void of worth and work. During his 32 years of life (he died in 1882), Andreescu managed to create several types of paintings- landscapes, still life and even portraits of thoughtful people. Andreescu's works breathe out introspection and calm, doubled with a certain thrill breezing though the leaves of the trees or the hair belonging to the models. It looks as if the artist wanted to embody his own melancholic personality with the help of the everlasting nature, be it in wintertime or ripened by the rays of summer and spring. He plays hide-and-seek among the trees, behind screens of green, wrapped in a magic cape, unseen and unheard by anybody else but the vegetal organisms.

Andreescu's style was polished by the French school of painting during his stay in Paris, where he attended classes at the Académie Julian, a private school and the perfect place for quiet Art students like the Romanian painter. Having benefited from a formal instruction in the artistic domain, Andreescu had the opportunity to experiment with various currents, which he sensibly managed to intertwine for a pleasant chromatic ballet.

A visual walk through Andreescu's forests almost throws us into a storybook written in a special language. Just like Alice, we step into the looking-glass and discover another side of our own manifold approach, a wide spectrum partially hidden by the greedy unconscious. Once we step into Otherland, we begin to stretch our sensitivity far above the level of the imaginable. In other words, we walk counterclockwise towards the beginning of everything, we step through leaves of order willing to reach the primordial chaos from were all consciousness once sprang. Elfin branches, paired up with towery ones, reach up to the sky in an attempt to desecrate the boundaries of the third dimension. White, gray and black, the three ghosts of the made-up chronological order, smother the canvas with a story unknown to the tongue. Outstretched and quivery, the great hand of introspection drops the Man to the ground.

We step out of the forest and into the open field or the next level of consciousness. Chaos makes room for revival, bringing to life crisp shadows and glazing the objects in lustre. It's time to meditate on the frail labyrinth of peace and passion, short-lived but fertile, where humans forget they will get lost at a certain moment. Light refracts from the painter's joy at his solitude, expressed in shades contrasting with his illness and shortcomings. The eye sees a mere slice of life, only to be overshadowed in the race against death. Andreescu's firm hand, the one which mastered the painter's point of view, could not be severed after ceasing to paint.

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Nicolae Tonitza

3/12/2015

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Gems on a child's face: the universe of innocence in Nicolae Tonitza's paintings

Childhood, the space-time of fantasy and unique flavours, is a topic dear to all kinds of artists. Armies of writers and poets have constantly praised its glory and fragrance in delicate words, while painters have chosen to knit innocent flesh and rosy cheeks out of sheer paint, on canvases damp with melancholy or liveliness. The universe of purity and round, apple-like cheeks is a sought-after haven in times of storm-haunted moods or shady horizons of the mind. What is it that draws the painter, for instance, into the playroom of those neat, tiny souls fueled by affection? The artists dive into their own past, plunging deeper and deeper into the memories of a long-lost state of being, when the world encircling the pain and happiness of a fragile body was a canvas of crude, brilliant colours. The element best depicting the true nature of a miniature human being is, perhaps, the double gate leading to the very core of the faultless essence of a child. Piercing and wide, the embodiment of a pristine mind, a child's eyes can bring depth to a painting without the need of any subterfuges.

Nicolae Tonitza - Portrait of a Child

One of the painters who have chosen to paint the vivid microcosm of the children's eyes is the Romanian painter Nicolae Tonitza. During his short existence (he passed away in 1940, at just 54 years of age), the renowned painter, who illustrated the Romanian Post-Impressionist and Expressionist movement, has created an extensive gallery of portraits featuring young children, from infants to young kids. Tonitza grew in a large family, together with four other siblings of which he was the oldest, thus playing an active role in the life of the youngsters, from the earliest stages of their life. Children bond easier with other children, and Tonitza might have been receptive enough to the behaviour and ways of his siblings in order to assimilate, unknowingly, the seeds of his future artistic trademark, nowadays a synonym for the painter's own personality.

Nicolae Tonitza - Two Sisters

Later on, as an adult, Tonitza lived in the daily presence of his own children, and that particular context delivered to him the fine fabric of a child's mind as it was possible to be perceived by a caring father. The cosmos of his own offspring was a bonus in the process of observing, understanding and detailing the nature of tender age. Tonitza's close bond with his family was transferred to his childhood-related art. Most of the painter's models were members of his family and the painter took great care to observe them in as many instances as possible of their activity or inactivity.

Nicolae Tonitza - Three Brothers (The painter's children)

The striking aspect in Tonitza's paintings of children is the depth of the models' glance, dark, mysterious waters sparkling with melancholy and silent, simplified understanding of the real world. What the painter shows to the viewer is not merely the visible spectrum of reality, but also the hidden reality of a parallel cosmos where humans, blinded by mundane thoughts and stripped of their purity, cannot reside without being branded with the scarlet letter of guilt. Tonitza might have painted with the aid of that corner of his mind which he had managed to keep unspoilt by the maculated hand of maturity. The children in Tonitza's paintings, real or fabricated models, may have originally had other eye colours, but the artist's vision effaced that trait and transfigured colour into meaning.

Nicolae Tonitza - Child in Rose

The perfect orbs dominate the peachy visage, tinted by alabaster, mating darkness and light into a graceful dance of contrast and complementary, dove-like expression. It is in those melancholic spheres, chambers full of wonderful tales, that Tonitza decided to plant the grains of mystery and life, and we are left to guess what lies within. Full lips resembling red carnations in bloom look like final pieces from a puzzle, added for the completion of a delicate gauze. Red and pink colour the plumpness of the tender cheeks belonging to these little Snow White-like characters. Tonitza chose not to put too much emphasis on the facial lines and curves, thus managing to bring out more the microcosm floating trapped inside the matte shade of the eyes.

Nicolae Tonitza - Girl in White

The vibrant palette used by Tonitza spreads tones of freshness on the canvas- red, green or warm tones of orange and brown tell the dreamy story of warm flesh smelling like dew, milk and cinnamon buns. The background seems to float, it's a sort of wallpaper where flowers and leaves crown the heads and busts of the models in a protective manner, or creamy cotton candy floating around like a watchful guardian entity. Several items of clothing, such as collars, scarves, headscarves or nightcaps confer a finishing touch to the doll-like image of the models. They are either white or brightly coloured, suitable for the fair nature of a child.

Nicolae Tonitza - Good Night

Looking at the children in Tonitza's paintings, I find myself trying to decipher the individual story of the future adult, to decode the mental pattern without erasing the innate enigma of the work of art, by walking along the curved road to the mind of their creator. Every painting has a story to tell, and in the process we manage, if we are careful enough, to discover the person behind the colours and shapes.

Lo Romanov 2015

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Dumitru (demetre) chiparus

1/14/2015

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...sau "românul pierdut"

S-a născut în Dorohoi, în Anul Domnului 1886, într-o zi rece de septembrie. Şi, la fel ca mulţi alţi Români, a luat calea pribegiei la numai 23 de ani, plecând în Italia pentru a urma cursurile maestrului Italian Raffaello Romanelli.

În 1912 va pleca în Franţa la Şcoala de Arte Frumoase, sub îndrumarea lui Antonin Mercie şi Jean Boucher. De aici încolo, deşi viaţa îi va fi curmată la doar 61 de ani, Dumitru Chipăruş va uimi lumea cu fiecare capodoperă Art Nouveau pe care o va crea.
Destinul artiştilor Români a fost, de multe ori, acela de a nu fi recunoscuţi în propria lor ţară decât prea târziu. Au părăsit casa bătrânească şi-au plecat în lume, stingându-se în fiecare clipă de dorul unei ţări căreia nu-i păsa.

În 1928, Dumitru Chipăruş perfectează tehnica ce-l va consacra - criselefantină - ce constă în combinarea fildeşului cu bronz, lemn, cristal sau lapis-lazuli - ajungând astfel să fie unul dintre cei mai importanţi reprezentanţi ai perioadei Art Deco. A fost influenţat de patru factori principali în arta sa - baletul rusesc al lui Sergei Diaghilev, arta antică egipteană, teatrul francez şi filmele perioadei.
În sculpturile din seria "Dansatori Persiani" pot fi recunoscute feţele marilor dansatori Vaslav Nijinsky şi Ida Rubinstein iar rochia ce e imortalizată în sculptura "Peştele de Aur" (Goldfish) reproduce schiţa rochiei produse pentru baletul "Regatul scufundat" de Lev Annensky

În 2012 una din sculpturile artistului - "The Dolly Sisters" - estimată la o valoare între 150.000 şi 200.000 de lire sterline, s-a vândut în licitaţie (Bonhams) pentru suma de 277.250 de lire sterline ($420.569).

O altă sculptură a artistului, "Les Amis Toujours", a fost vândută de Christie's (2010) pentru suma de $68.500.

Atenţie mare la copiile existente pe piaţă - şi nu sunt puţine. Lucrările originale ale artistului au imprimate în marea lor majoritate numele producătorului şi semnătura artistului în marmură - uneori acestea sunt foarte greu de găsit, dar sunt acolo. Chiar şi aşa, semnătura poate să aparţină unui fals. Trebuie verificate detaliile sculpturilor - degete, trăsăturile feţelor, îmbrăcămintea. Sculpturile originale sunt extrem de detaliate, fiecare deget, de exemplu, este perfect. Verificaţi fildeşul pentru a fi siguri că e original (testul acului încălzit) şi de asemenea că aparţine perioadei (linii învechite ale osului).

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Constantin Brancusi

11/28/2012

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Brâncuși grew up in the village of Hobiţa, Gorj, near Târgu Jiu, close to Romania's Carpathian Mountains, an area known for its rich tradition of folk crafts, particularly woodcarving. Geometric patterns of the region are seen in his later works.
His parents Nicolae and Maria Brâncuși were poor peasants who earned a meager living through back-breaking labor; from the age of seven, Constantin herded the family's flock of sheep. He showed talent for carving objects out of wood, and often ran away from home to escape the bullying of his father and older brothers.

At the age of nine, Brâncuși left the village to work in the nearest large town. At 11 he went into the service of a grocer in Slatina; and then he became a domestic in a public house in Craiova where he remained for several years. When he was 18, Brâncuși created a violin by hand with materials he found around his workplace. Impressed by Brâncuși's talent for carving, an industrialist entered him in the Craiova School of Arts and Crafts, where he pursued his love for woodworking, graduating with honors in 1898.
He then enrolled in the Bucharest School of Fine Arts, where he received academic training in sculpture. He worked hard, and quickly distinguished himself as talented. One of his earliest surviving works, under the guidance of his anatomy teacher, Dimitrie Gerota, is a masterfully rendered écorché which was exhibited at the Romanian Athenaeum in 1903. Though just an anatomical study, it foreshadowed the sculptor's later efforts to reveal essence rather than merely copy outward appearance.

Working in Paris

In 1903, Brâncuși traveled to Munich, and from there to Paris. In Paris, he was welcomed by the community of artists and intellectuals brimming with new ideas. He worked for two years in the workshop of Antonin Mercié of the École des Beaux-Arts, and was invited to enter the workshop of Auguste Rodin. Even though he admired the eminent Rodin he left the Rodin studio after only two months, saying, "Nothing can grow under big trees."
After leaving Rodin's workshop, Brâncuși began developing the revolutionary style for which he is known. His first commissioned work, "The Prayer", was part of a gravestone memorial. It depicts a young woman crossing herself as she kneels, and marks the first step toward abstracted, non-literal representation, and shows his drive to depict "not the outer form but the idea, the essence of things." He also began doing more carving, rather than the method popular with his contemporaries, that of modeling in clay or plaster which would be cast in metal, and by 1908 he worked almost exclusively by carving.

In the following few years he made many versions of "Sleeping Muse" and "The Kiss", further simplifying forms to geometrical and sparse objects.

The Prayer

Sleeping Muse

The Kiss

His works became popular in France, Romania and the United States. Collectors, notably John Quinn, bought his pieces, and reviewers praised his works. In 1913 Brâncuși's work was displayed at both the Salon des Indépendants and the first exhibition in the U.S. of modern art, the Armory Show.
In 1920, he developed a notorious reputation with the entry of "Princess X" in the Salon. The phallic shape of the piece scandalized the Salon, and despite Brâncuși's explanation that it was an anonymous portrait, removed it from the exhibition. "Princess X" was revealed to be Princess Marie Bonaparte, direct descendant of the younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte. Brâncuși represented or caricatured her life as a large gleaming bronze phallus. This phallus symbolizes the model's obsession with the penis and her lifelong quest to achieve vaginal orgasm.

Princess X

Around this time he began crafting the bases for his sculptures with much care and originality because he considered them important to the works themselves.
He began working on the group of sculptures that are known as "Bird in Space" — simple shapes representing a bird in flight. The works are based on his earlier "Măiastra" series. In Romanian folklore "Măiastra" is a beautiful golden bird who foretells the future and cures the blind. Over the following 20 years, Brâncuși would make 20-some versions of "Bird in Space" out of marble or bronze. Photographer Edward Steichen purchased one of the "birds" in 1926 and shipped it to the United States. However, the customs officers did not accept the "bird" as a work of art and placed a duty upon its import as an industrial item. They charged the high tax placed upon raw metals instead of the no tax on art. A trial the next year overturned the assessment. Athena Tacha Spear's book, Brâncuși's Birds, (CAA monographs XXI, NYU Press, New York, 1969), first sorted out the 36 versions and their development, from the early Măiastra, to the Golden Bird of the late teens, to the Bird in Space, which emerged in the early '20s and which Brâncuși perfected throughout his life.

Măiastra

His work became popular in the U.S., however, and he visited several times during his life. Worldwide fame in 1933 brought him the commission of building a meditation temple in India for Maharajah of Indore, but when Brâncuși went to India in 1937 to complete the plans and begin construction, the Maharajah was away and lost interest in the project when he returned.
In 1938, he finished the World War I monument in Târgu-Jiu where he had spent much of his childhood. "Table of Silence", "The Gate of the Kiss", and "Endless Column" commemorate the courage and sacrifice of Romanian civilians who in 1916 fought off a German invasion. The restoration of this ensemble was spearheaded by the World Monuments Fund and was completed in 2004.

Table of Silence - Masa Tacerii

The Gate of the Kiss - Poarta Sarutului

Endless Column - Coloana Infinitului

The Târgu Jiu ensemble marks the apex of his artistic career. In his remaining 19 years he created less than 15 pieces, mostly reworking earlier themes, and while his fame grew he withdrew. In 1956 Life magazine reported, "Wearing white pajamas and a yellow gnomelike cap, Brâncuși today hobbles about his studio tenderly caring for and communing with the silent host of fish birds, heads, and endless columns which he created."
Brâncuși was cared for in his later years by a Romanian refugee couple. He became a French citizen in 1952 in order to make the caregivers his heirs, and to bequeath his studio and its contents to the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris.

Personal life

Brâncuși always dressed in the simple ways the Romanian peasants did. His studio was reminiscent of the houses of the peasants from his native region: there was a big slab of rock as a table and a primitive fireplace, similar to those found in traditional houses in his native Oltenia, while the rest of the furniture was made by him out of wood. Brâncuși would cook his own food, traditional Romanian dishes, with which he would treat his guests.
Brâncuși held a large spectrum of interests, from science to music. He was a good violinist and he would sing old Romanian folk songs, often expressing by them his feelings of homesickness. Nevertheless, he never considered moving back to his native Romania, but he did visit it eight times.
His circle of friends included artists and intellectuals in Paris such as Amedeo Modigliani, Ezra Pound, Henri Pierre Roché, Guillaume Apollinaire, Louise Bourgeois, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Henri Rousseau, and Fernand Léger. He was an old friend of Romany Marie, who was also Romanian, and referred Isamu Noguchi to her café in Greenwich Village. Although surrounded by the Parisian avant-garde, Brâncuși never lost the contact with Romania and had friends from the community of Romanian artists and intellectuals living in Paris, including Benjamin Fondane, George Enescu, Theodor Pallady, Camil Ressu, Nicolae Dărăscu, Panait Istrati, Traian Vuia, Eugène Ionesco, Emil Cioran and Paul Celan.

Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, Mary Reynolds - Villefranche, France, 1929.

Brâncuși held a particular interest in mythology, especially Romanian mythology, folk tales, and traditional art (which also had a strong influence on his works), but he became interested in African and Mediterranean art as well.
A talented handyman, he built his own phonograph, and made most of his furniture, utensils, and doorways. His worldview valued "differentiating the essential from the ephemeral," with Plato, Lao-Tzu, and Milarepa as influences. He was a saint-like idealist and near ascetic, turning his workshop into a place where visitors noted the deep spiritual atmosphere. However, particularly through the 10s and 20s, he was known as a pleasure seeker and merrymaker in his bohemian circle. He enjoyed cigarettes, good wine, and the company of women. He had one child, John Moore, whom he never acknowledged.

Death and legacy

He died on March 16, 1957 at the age of 81 leaving 1200 photographs and 215 sculptures. He was buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. Also located in that cemetery are statues carved by Brâncuși for several fellow artists who died; the best-known of these is "Le Baiser" ("The Kiss").
His works are housed in the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the National Museum of Art of Romania (Bucharest), and the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), as well as in other major museums around the world. The Philadelphia Museum of Art currently has the largest collection of Brâncuși sculptures in the United States.
A reconstruction of Brâncuși's onetime studio in Paris is open to the public. It is close to the Pompidou Centre, in the rue Rambuteau. After being refused by the Romanian Communist government, he bequeathed part of his collection to the French state on condition that his workshop be rebuilt as it was on the day he died.
Architect Klas Anshelm designed the Malmö Konsthall, which opened in 1975 and is one of Europe’s largest exhibition halls for contemporary art, taking inspiration for the construction from Brâncuși's studio, after visiting the sculptor in Paris.
Brâncuși was elected posthumously to the Romanian Academy in 1990.
In 2002, a sculpture by Brâncuși named "Danaide" was sold for $18.1 million, the highest that a sculpture piece had ever sold for at auction. In May 2005, a piece from the "Bird in Space" series broke that record, selling for $27.5 million in a Christie's auction. In the Yves Saint Laurent/Pierre Bergé sale on February 23, 2009, another sculpture of Brâncuși, "Madame L.R.", was sold for €29.185 million ($37.2 million), setting a new historical record.
In 2011, Google commemorated his 135th birthday with a tribute on their main page.

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ION ANDREESCU

Nicolae Tonitza

Dumitru (demetre) chiparus

...sau "românul pierdut"

Constantin Brancusi

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