Nicolae Tonitza

Nicolae Tonitza (April 13, 1886 – February 27, 1940)

De la Tonitza

was a Romanian painter, engraver, lithographer, journalist and art critic. Drawing inspiration from Post-impressionism and Expressionism, he had a major role in introducing modernist guidelines to local art.
             Born in Bârlad, he left his home town in 1902 in order to attend the Iaşi National School of Fine Arts, where he had among his teachers Gheorghe Popovici and Emanoil Bardasare. The following year he visited Italy together with University of Bucharest students of archeology under the direction of Grigore Tocilescu.During that period, together with some of his fellow students, Tonitza painted the walls of Grozeşti church.



  

De la Tonitza

      
In 1908 he left for Munich, where he attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts; he began publishing political cartoons in Furnica, and contributing art criticism articles to Arta Română. Tonitza spent the following three years in Paris, where he visited artists' studios, and studied famous paintings. Although the young artist's creation would initially conform to the prevalent style, his gift for colour and his personal touch would eventually lead him towards experiment. Throughout his life, he remained committed to the Munich School, hailing its innovative style over the supposedly "obscure imitators of Matisse".

De la Tonitza

            After his return, Tonitza painted frescos in several churches of Moldavia and worked as an art teacher, and then, together with Cezar Petrescu, as editor of Iaşul newspaper. He married Ecaterina Climescu in 1913. The art collector Krikor Zambaccian, whom Tonitza befriended after 1925, indicated that, during its existence, Iaşul sided with the Conservative Party, opposing Romania's entry into World War I.

De la Tonitza

            In 1916, after Romania entered the conflict, Tonitza was drafted into the Army and fell prisoner to the Bulgarians during the Battle of Turtucaia. Interned, he became ill with malaria and rheumatism, which would plague him until his death. He was set free and returned in 1918.
            During the 1920s, he was a member of the Arta Română group (alongside Gheorghe Petraşcu and others). His commitment to social commentary is best perceivable in his graphic work, malitious and sometimes dramatical — he sketched for many contemporary, usually political and leftist, magazines: Socialismul (official voice of the short-lived Socialist Party of Romania), Adevărul, Flacăra, Hiena, Rampa, and Scarlat Callimachi's Clopotul —, and in his articles (including the ones in Viaţa Românească and Curentul), which mainly discussed cultural and social events. He became close to the writer and activist Gala Galaction, whose book O lume nouă he illustrated in 1919, and whose portrait ("The Man of a New World") he painted one year later.

De la Tonitza

His first catalog, issued in 1920, was prefaced by the poet and art critic Tudor Arghezi.

            In 1921, Tonitza expanded his range, painting prototypes for a ceramics factory, and organizing a ceramics exhibition; the same year, he moved to Vălenii de Munte, and decided to cease contributing to the press. It was at the time that he developed on his characteristic style and themes, both of which, Zambaccian contended, were determined by his experiences as a father.

De la Tonitza

            Later, he became the editor of the art magazine Artele Frumoase, and, in 1922, traveled to Transylvania, where he befriended Aurel Popp. In 1926, Tonitza, Oscar Han, Francisc Şirato, and Ştefan Dimitrescu, organized themselves as Grupul celor patru ("The Group of Four"). He met success in 1925, after opening a large exhibit of his Vălenii de Munte paintings in Bucharest, while raising controversy (including criticism from Ressu) over his "poster-like" style.              Despite his fame, he continued to live an impoverished and hectic existence, which probably contributed to the decline of his health. By 1931, he was dividing his time between Bucharest and Constanţa, having agreed to paint the walls of Saint George's Church in the latter city. Tonitza was angered by the reception of his work in Constanţa, declaring himself insulted after he was made to showcase his designs in competition to lesser-known artists. Eventually, he received the commission, and spent the next two years at work on the murals, while distancing himself from Grupul celor patru.

             According to Zambaccian, Tonitza's early association with socialism was partly due to the interest taken in him by the leftist press, who was willing to reward his contributions at a time when "one could not live solely by painting".The same source stated that the artist later refrained from expressing political opinions, and, on one occasion during the 1930s, jokingly referred to himself as "a supporter of Petre P. Carp"(the Conservative leader had died in 1919). Nevertheless, he signed, alongside several other prominent cultural figures, an appeal to tighten cultural connections between Romania and the Soviet Union, leading to the creation of Societatea pentru întreţinerea raporturilor culturale dintre România şi Uniunea Sovietică (the Society for Maintaining Cultural Links between Romania and the Soviet Union) in May 1935^.
              He fell severely ill in 1937, and died three years later. He is buried at the Ghencea cemetery, in Bucharest.

Theodor Pallady

Theodor Pallady

De la Theodor Pallady

(April 11, 1871 – August 16, 1956)
was a Romanian painter.
            Pallady was born in Iaşi, but at a young age, his family moved to Dresden, where he studied engineering at the Dresden University of Technology between 1887 and 1889. At the same time, he studied art with Erwin Oehme, who, recognising his artistic intuition, suggested that he go to Paris. In Paris, Pallady worked in the studio of Jean Arman and enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts (Académie des Beaux-Arts). In 1892, he worked in the studio of Gustave Moreau, where he had as colleagues Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, and Albert Marquet.

De la Theodor Pallady

            Pallady was influenced by the Symbolist environment of the late 19th century, and his paintings before 1916 contain Symbolist motifs, sometimes with echoes of Moreau and Puvis de Chavannes.

De la Theodor Pallady

His drawings and colouring show a debt to Renaissance tradition, and his landscapes,

De la Theodor Pallady

which were sometimes large-scale, owe much to the vision of Romania made popular by Nicolae Grigorescu and Ion Andreescu. Around 1920 his style began to show the influence of the analytical drawing of Cubism. In 1904, Pallady returned to Romania, where he held an exhibition at the Romanian Athenaeum. However, he maintained close connections with Paris, where he continued to hold many personal exhibitions, up until World War II. He also exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1924, 1940 and 1942.

De la Theodor Pallady

            He died in Bucharest, and is buried in Bellu cemetery.
            The Theodor Pallady Museum in Bucharest, a branch of the National Museum of Art of Romania, has only six of Pallady's paintings; it is housed in Bucharest's oldest private lodging. Other works of Pallady's are features of the National Museum's main collection, at Bucharest's Zambaccian Museum, the Palace of Culture in Iaşi, the Argeş County Museum in Piteşti, and the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu.There are also paintings by this painter at the Craiova Art Museum in Craiova,Romania.

Stefan Luchian

Ştefan Luchian

De la Stefan Luchian

(1 February 1868–28 June 1917)
was a Romanian painter, famous for his landscapes and still life works.
He was born in Ştefăneşti, a village of Botoşani County, as the son of Major Dumitru Luchian and of Elena Chiriacescu. The Luchian family moved to Bucharest in 1873 and his mother desired that he would follow his father's path and join the Military School. Instead, in 1885, Luchian joined the painting class at the Fine Arts School, where he was encouraged to pursue a career in art by Nicolae Grigorescu, whose work was to have a major impact on his entire creative life.

De la Stefan Luchian

Starting in autumn of 1889 Luchian studied for two semesters at the Munich Fine Arts Academy, where he created copies of the works by Correggio and Rembrandt housed in the Kunstareal. After his return to Romania, he took part in the first exhibition of the Cercul Artistic art group.
He showed himself unable to accept the academic guidelines imposed by the Bavarian and Romanian schools^.             The following year, he left for Paris, where he studied at the Académie Julian, and, although taught by the academic artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau, became acquainted with impressionist works of art. Luchian's painting Ultima cursă de toamnă shows the influence of Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, but also echoes of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, Modernism, and Post-impressionism (also obvious in works created after his return to Bucharest).

De la Stefan Luchian

              In 1896, together with Nicolae Vermont, Constantin Artachino, and the art collector, Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti, Stefan Luchian was one of the main founders of Bucharest's Salonul Independenţilor, which was opened in front of the official Salon (the Romanian equivalent of the Paris Salon). Two years later, the group led to the creation of Societatea Ileana and its press organ, Ileana, in which Luchian was the first to illustrate.From then on Luchian began integrating Symbolist elements in his work, taking inspiration from various related trends (Art Nouveau, Jugendstil and Mir iskusstva).
            In 1900, Luchian contributed with two pastels

De la Stefan Luchian

to Romania's Pavilion at the World Fair, and in the same year suffered the first symptoms of multiple sclerosis, the disease which, after some initial improvements, was to haunt him for the rest of his life. Nonetheless, he continued painting and, until 1915, had his works displayed in numerous exhibitions, albeit to a largely indifferent public.At his 1905 exhibition, the only buyer of a painting was his former teacher Grigorescu. Despite being appreciated by a select few (including the writer Ion Luca Caragiale), Luchian lived in poverty (the large fortune he had inherited was progressively drained).
           Paralysed since 1909, he had to live the rest of his life in an armchair. This did not prevent him from working on an entire series of landscapes and flowers. He had begun flower paintings earlier, but from 1908 he concentrated all his creative energy into the subject. Toward the end of his life, Luchian was no longer able to hold the painter's brush with his fingers, and was instead helped to tie it to his wrist in order to continue work.


           

De la Stefan Luchian

At the time, he had begun enjoying considerable success — a phenomenon which the writer Tudor Arghezi attributed to the momentary rise of Take Ionescu as a politician (Ionescu had become the center of a fashion and subject of imitation, and he was among the first to buy more than one of Luchian's paintings). As his disease became notorious, a rumor spread that Luchian allowed someone else to paint in his name; the scandal brough about Luchian's arrest under charges of fraud (he was released soon after). Arghezi took pride in being one of his few defenders.
One of the last events in Luchian's life was a visit paid to his house by composer and violinist George Enescu. Although the two had never met before, Enescu played his instrument as a personal tribute to the dying artist.
            He died in Bucharest and he was buried at the Bellu Cemetery.
            By the 1930s, Luchian's impact on Romanian art was becoming the subject of disputes in the cultural world, with several critics claiming that his work had been minor and the details of his life exaggerated.Arghezi was again involved in the polemic, and wrote passionate pieces which supported Luchian's art and attributed adverse reactions to jealousy and to Luchian's voiced distaste for mediocrity.
             In 1948, Luchian was posthumously elected to the Romanian Academy. An art school in Botoşani bears his name.
             His life was the subject of Nicolae Mărgineanu's 1981 film, Luchian, where his character was played by Ion Caramitru (Maria Ploae was Luchian's sister; other actors starring in the film where George Constantin, Ştefan Velniciuc, Florin Călinescu as Arghezi, and Adrian Pintea as Nicolae Tonitza).

Nicolae Grigorescu

           

De la Nicolae Grigorescu

The painter was born in Pitaru, (judeţul Dâmbovița, commune Potlogi), Romania. In 1843 the family moved to București. At a young age (between 1846 and 1850), he became an apprentice at the workshop of the painter Anton Chladek and created icons for the church of Băicoi and the monastery of Căldărușani. In 1856 he created the historical composition Mihai scăpând stindardul (Michael the Brave dropping the flag), which he presented to the Wallachian Prince Barbu Știrbei, together with a petition asking for financial aid for his studies.
           Between 1856 and 1857, he painted the church of the Zamfira monastery, Prahova county, and in 1861 the church of the Agapia monastery.

De la Nicolae Grigorescu

With the help of Mihail Kogălniceanu, he received a scholarship to study in France.            In the autumn of 1861, young Grigorescu left for Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. He also attended the workshop of Sébastien Cornu, where he had as a colleague Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Knowing his weaknesses, he concentrated on drawing and composition.
            However, he soon left this workshop and, attracted by the artistic concepts of the Barbizon school, he left Paris for that village, where he became the associate of artists such as Jean-François Millet, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet and Théodore Rousseau. Under the influence of the movement, Grigorescu looked for new means of expression and followed the trend of en plein air painting, which was also important in Impressionism.

De la Nicolae Grigorescu

As part of the Universal Exposition of Paris (1867), he contributed seven works. Then he exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1868 the painting Tânără țigancă (Young Gypsy girl).

De la Nicolae Grigorescu

            He returned to Romania a few times and starting in 1870 he participated in the exhibits of living artists and those organized by the Society of the Friends of the Belle-Arts. Between 1873 and 1874 he traveled to Italy, Greece and Vienna.
            In 1877 he was called to accompany the Romanian Army as a "frontline painter" in the Romanian War of Independence. During the battles at the Grivica Strongpoint and Oryahovo, he made drawings and sketches which later used in creating larger-scale works.
            In 1889 his work was featured in the Universal Exhibition in Paris and at the Romanian Atheneum. Centerpiece exhibits took place at the Romanian Atheneum would follow in 1891, 1895, 1897, 1902, and 1905.
            From 1879 to 1890 he worked in France, especially in Vitré, Brittany, and in his workshop in Paris. In 1890 he settled in Câmpina and started depicting pastoral themes, especially portraits of peasant girls, pictures of ox carts on dusty country roads and other landscapes. He was named honorary member of the Romanian Academy in 1899.
           At the moment of his death, Grigorescu had been working on his Întoarcerea de la bâlci (The Return from the Fair).

Nicolae Comanescu

           Nicolae Comanescu

De la Nicolae Comanescu

 In the truest sense of the words, the Romanian artist, 39, produces art from the dusty rubble of his home city.
            Traditionalists rely on oil paints, crayon, charcoals and acrylics. Nicolae Comanescu relied on these as well in his earlier series of paintings Wrong Paintings, Grand Prix Remix and Beach Culture in Bercsenyi, in which he represents the hyperactivity of the media.
             Now however the artist from Romania, born in 1968, paints with dust.

De la Nicolae Comanescu

In the attempt to capture his hometown of Bucharest using pictures, Comanescu transforms the powdery ruins of communism, the stifling material of a favoured and impressive city, into dust to produce emulations of his area which are stamped with photographic precision: deserted streets, carriages and parks not only become objects of his artistic eye but also metaphors of the dusty everyday life of everyone living in Bucharest.

De la Nicolae Comanescu

His exhibition ‘Dust 2.0’ is, according to the artist, not randomly just about the use of dust. It is about the matter rich in information, which reflects both subtly and strikingly the past and present of Bucharest at the same time.

Corneliu Baba

            Corneliu Baba

De la Corneliu Baba

(November 18, 1906, Craiova—December 28, 1997)

was a Romanian painter, primarily a portraitist, but also known as a genre painter and an illustrator of books.

            Having first studied under his father, the academic painter Gheorghe Baba, Baba studied briefly at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Bucharest, but did not receive a degree. His first public exhibition was in 1934 in the spa town of Băile Herculane; this led to his studying later that year under Nicolae Tonitza in Iaşi, finally receiving a diploma in Fine Arts from the faculty at Iaşi in 1938, where he was named assistant to the Chair of Painting in 1939 and a Professor of Painting in 1946.

            Shortly after his 1948 official debut with a painting called The Chess Player at the Art Salon in Bucharest, he was arrested and briefly imprisoned in Galata Prison in Iaşi. The following year he was suspended without explanation from his faculty position and moved from Iaşi to Bucharest.

Despite an initially uneasy relationship with communist authorities who denounced him as formalist, Baba soon established himself as an illustrator and artist. In 1955 he was allowed to travel to the Soviet Union, and won a Gold Medal in an international exhibition in Warsaw, Poland. In 1956, Baba accompanied The Chess Player and two other paintings showed at the Venice Biennale, after which the paintings traveled on to exhibits in Moscow, Leningrad, and Prague.

             In 1958 Baba was appointed Professor of Painting at the Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of Fine Arts in Bucharest, where Niculiţă Secrieriu and Ștefan Câlția were among his pupils. The same year he received the title of Emeritus Master of Art. By this time, his earlier problems with the communist authorities appear to have been smoothed over. In the next decade, both he and his paintings were to travel the world, participating in exhibitions in places as diverse as Cairo, Helsinki, Vienna, and New Delhi, culminating in a 1964 solo exhibition in Brussels. In 1962, the Romanian government gave him the title of People's Artist; in 1963 he was appointed a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy, and in 1964 was similarly honored by the East Berlin Academy of Fine Art.

             Honors and exhibitions continued to accumulate, ranging from a 1970 solo exhibition in New York City to the receipt of a Red Star decoration in 1971. While his name became a household word in Romania and, to a lesser extent, throughout the Eastern bloc, he never achieved comparable fame in the West.

             In 1988, Baba was seriously injured by an accident in his studio, and was immobilized for several months. Shortly before his death in 1997, Baba published his memoir, Notes by an Artist of Eastern Europe. He was posthumously awarded the Prize for Excellence by the Romanian Cultural Foundation.

De la Corneliu Baba

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De la Corneliu Baba

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De la Corneliu Baba

Theodor Aman

            Theodor Aman (Campulung-Muscel, 20 March 1831; Bucharest, 19 Aug 1891) was a Romanian painter of Armenian descent. His style is often considered to be a predecessor of Impressionism. After mastering the principles of painting in Craiova and Bucharest, where he studied under Constantin Lecca (1807-87) and Carol Valstein (1795-1857), he left for Paris around 1850. There he attended the studio of Michel-Martin Drolling and, after Drolling's death, that of Francois-Edouard Picot. In 1853 he made his public debut at the Paris Salon with a Self-portrait (Bucharest, Mus. A. Col.). A year later he travelled to Constantinople (now Istanbul), where the Sultan bought his painting the Battle of Oltenita (1854; Istanbul, Dolmabahce Pal.). Aman then went to the Crimea, where he documented the Battle of Alma (Bucharest, N. Mus. A.) in a painting shown at the Exposition Internationale in Paris (1855). The autumn of the same year and the spring of the following year were spent in Wallachia, where the prince, Barbu Stirbei, honoured Aman with a minor nobiliary title and a grant to enable him to continue his studies in France. In September 1856, after an interval in Italy, he finally returned to Romania, thereafter leaving only sporadically.

De la Theodor Aman

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De la Theodor Aman

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De la Theodor Aman

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De la Theodor Aman