10,550 research outputs found
Ion Gheorghiu
No full textIon Alin Gheorghiu (1929-2001) was a Romanian painter and sculptor and an elected member of the Romanian Academy. His artistic career under Communism was helped by his background: born in a modest working class family, he studied at the Institute of Fine Arts ‘Nicolae Grigorescu’ under the famous professor and painter Camil Ressu (1880-1962). (Ressu was awarded the title ‘People’s Artist’, and became a member of the Romanian Academy and honorary president of the Artists Union, helped by his longstanding membership of the Social Democratic Party.)
Gheorghiu finished his studies in 1954 without graduating; his final degree piece, “Creanga si Eminescu la Iasi” (“Creanga and Eminescu [Romania’s pre-eminent writers] in Iasi”), was considered to be both nationalist and formalist, which was unacceptable during the period of Soviet–inspired Socialist Realism. Until the withdrawal of the Red Army in 1958, his work was rejected in official exhibitions. He had to unload potato vans at train stations and had no studio. However, after 1958 national and international exhibitions followed, in Memphis, London, Prague, Moscow, Paris, Warsaw and more, and he was awarded many international prizes, including the Homage to Picasso Award in Italy in 1983. Gheorghiu was extremely exigent and chose to have very few solo exhibitions. Despite repeated invitations to receive his degree, he refused to do so, regarding his initial rejection as a badge of honour.
The themes of Hanging Gardens and Chimeras are two significant poles in Gheorghiu’s art and reveal his fascination with mythology and fantasy. However, under pressure from the cultural apparatchiks, Grigorescu tries to dismiss this mythological dimension and to discount the non-conformist aspects of his work:
“the allusions to Semiramis’ mythological construction [Hanging Gardens] do not constitute, I believe, the essential element of Gheorghiu’s latest paintings. The artist detests that which is artificial and I am convinced that he regards as bizarre the idea of dislocating the rows of flowers and of arranging them with savant geometries: he looks for the rationality of nature’s compositions as they are and does not want to impose a pre-established order. He is not attracted by the proud gesture of a queen who purposefully built one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The wonder in his painting is hidden within the very inner embodiment of living things… Gheorghiu’s gardens are hanging not in the legendary space of Semiramis but in that meeting place of diverse forms from the visible world.” (Grigorescu, p.6)
Grigorescu reinvents Gheorghiu’s art in a Marxist vein, almost forbidding any idealist reading of his paintings. Without justification, he regards Gheorghiu’s work as celebrating both the abundance of nature in its harvest and natural form, and industrial landscapes (which “impart a feeling of strength”). However, while there is an emphasis on the natural form, with his images of flowers and shells, this is far from the dialectic materialist vision of nature to which Grigorescu alludes. In this monograph, there is no industrial imagery, nor is there,
“the boundless expanse of fields sunlit by the ripe yellow of the grain, where the massive figures of the combines lay a powerful accent… the same can be seen in his industrial landscapes – elaborate constructions whose geometries impart a feeling of strength. … The industrial view is in Gheorghiu’s perspective a reason for celebrating matter itself… the concern (characteristic of his art) to proclaim the unity of material forms has led Gheorghiu to sculpture”. (Grigorescu, p.11)
Grigorescu seems to fabricate the artist’s allegiance to Marx’s historic and dialectical materialist doctrine as if the monograph needed (and perhaps it did need) to pass the test of ideological censorship. Such a defence was a requirement for any artist seeking publication in Communist Romania. Was Grigorescu helping, intentionally or otherwise, Gheorghiu to get his work published for national and international audiences?
Many of Gheorghiu’s abstract sculptures in cast metal are entitled “chimeras”. Although influenced by Dimitrie Paciurea’s elemental chimeras of earth, water and fire, they seem nevertheless to stem from Gheorghiu’s own imagination, reflecting his personal exploration in the use of chromatic rhythm and simplification of form. [Written by Alex Popescu, December 2016
Artă în spațiul public sau artă pentru sine. Ipostaze ale artistului Ion Grigorescu în epoca comunistă și posttotalitară (Art in the Public Space or Art for Oneself. Hypostases of the Artist Ion Grigorescu during Communism and the Post-totalitarian Period)
No full textThis article discusses the case of Ion Grigorescu, and of his ambiguous relationship with the communist regime, which he registered through a form of ”documentary realism”. Through his ”realgrams” Grigorescu documented real life experiences in an innovatory approach to the majority of Romanian artists of the time using photographs of his everyday environment and being inspired by his social and political context. Grigorescu is thus an artist committed to the public space and assuming a critical stance without it being discursive, pedant or moralizing. The approach of this study is descriptive, based on the artists’ artworks and self-descriptions, and seeking to situate Grigorescu’s approach in the context of the communist regime and its transformation after 1990 into a democratic regime. The conclusions show that Grigorescu’s artworks are anti-system, criticizing any establishment, no matter in which regime he finds himself. His contestation is specific to a committed artist that chooses to express his freedom of expression beyond his own studio
Authentication of a Painting by Nicolae Grigorescu Using Modern Multi-Analytical Methods
No full textThe paper presents the expertise of authenticating a painting by Nicolae Grigorescu through the involvement of multi-analytical techniques, in order to identify and evaluate some archaeometric and chemometric characteristics of the pictorial materials and of the support, used in determining the age. The painting is made with oil colors on pressed cardboard, with preparation based on chalk powder and animal glue. The painting presents two elements as being counterfeit, which have attracted suspicions, namely the signature of the author (presenting a semi-transparent covering veil), and, on the back, a writing of dating, performed by a very controversial art historian. The investigation was carried out by direct analysis with magnification devices, in reflected UV (ultraviolet), VIS (visible), and NIR (near- infrared) light, and by OM, SEM-EDX, and μ-FTIR. The results showed that the painting is authentic and belongs to Nicolae Grigorescu, and the dating established previously by Amelia Pavel through the writing on the back is certain
Portrait of Dymphna Cusack, author [picture]
No full textCondition: Good.; Part of collection: Ion Idriess glass plate negative collection.; Title from signature on image.; Also available in an electronic version via the Internet at: http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3299415. "My love, Dymphna Cusack 1954"--signature on image
Artă în spațiul public sau artă pentru sine: ipostaze ale artistului Ion Grigorescu în epoca comunistă și posttotalitară
No full textThis article discusses the case of Ion Grigorescu, and of his ambiguous relationship with the communist regime, which he registered through a form of "documentary realism". Through his "realgrams" Grigorescu documented real life experiences in an innovatory approach to the majority of Romanian artists of the time using photographs of his everyday environment, and being inspired by his social and political context. Grigorescu is thus an artist committed to the public space and assuming a critical stance without it being discursive, pedant or moralizing. The approach of this study is descriptive, based on the artists' artworks and self-descriptions, and seeking to situate Grigorescu's approach in the context of the communist regime and its transformation after 1990 into a democratic regime. The conclusions show that Grigorescu's artworks are anti-system, criticizing any establishment, no matter in which regime he finds himself. His contestation is specific to a committed artist that chooses to express his freedom of expression beyond his own studio
Another realism:Ion Grigorescu, photography and document in 1970s Romania
No full textIn the Romanian context of the 1970s, how was it possible to produce a work of art that the authorities deemed too realistic? How can one understand the critique of an excess of realism when in 1971 the doctrine of Socialist Realism was re-established? This essay examines the notion of realism as forged by Romanian artist Ion Grigorescu. Drawing on recent writings in the theory of photography, it helps us understand how Grigorescu used the photographic medium to produce works, which, whilst adhering to realism’s principles, contravened the regime’s prescriptions. The use the artist made of the term "document" to circumvent official injunctions along with the national and international artistic sources of his work are among the questions addressed in this article to show how, even in a Communist country, dissent could walk on the paths of realism
Ion Pacea
No full textIon Pacea was born in 1924 in Greece and died in 1999 in Bucharest. He was an honorary member of the Romanian Academy and is considered one of the greatest colourists of modern Romanian painting. Between 1945-50 he studied at the Institute of Fine Arts ‘Nicolae Grigorescu’ and at the Free Academy ‘Guguianu’ (1946-51) under professors such as Camil Ressu, Jean Al. Steriade, and Alexandru Ciucurencu (1903-77). At this time Pacea was a follower of Fauvism, with its vivid expressionism and non-naturalistic use of colour, that flourished in Paris at the end of the Belle Époque. Initially his paintings were figurative (industrial landscapes and portraits of workers) but he evolved towards abstract painting after a period of “ambiguous interplay between figuration and abstraction, especially in his marine paintings and still lives”.[i]A catalogue from a French exhibition on Romanian Modernism described his later art:
“In his paintings the brightness of colours is sustained by a paradoxical alliance between the flattened surfaces of forms and free vibrant gestural brushstrokes.”[ii]
Pacea continued his studies in Perugia, Italy in 1963. Following many solo and collective exhibitions in Romania, he was awarded various national and international awards. Occasionally he would act in Romanian films, even in leading roles such as Săracul Ioanide (‘Poor Ioanide’). His works are painted in oil or guache and are striking for their chromatic variety and formal simplification, drawn with a confident line and strong and vibrant accents. He was also known for designing tapestries and murals in both fresco and mosaic.
To a Western eye not tuned to the ideological sensitivities of Soviet-occupied Romania, when he first exhibited at the “Official Salon” in Bucharest in 1947, Pacea’s compositions might look ordinary. But at a time when other painters were confined to painting official portraits of Communist leaders or the great achievements of the motherland, Pacea had the rare freedom to explore purely aesthetic avenues towards an abstract use of colour. He was exempted from paying tribute to ideological doctrine because he was being pushed forward as a showcase of artists’ pseudo-freedom in Stalinist Romania. The bombastic eulogies which were written about him, even a couple of decades after Socialist Realism, speak for themselves:
“A full-grown artist, in full command of all his gifts, having reached the acme of a tenacious progression, maturely perfected by time: so, here is Ion Pacea himself, ablaze now with the inner light and warmth of a fresh and superbly generous freedom. To be faithful to his achievement, the critic’s words should tune up in the free key-note of a private diary, filling the page with fulgent ravishment, with the boundless mirth of his colours. … To begin with, the firmament of our memory should bloom with the flashing whites of Pacea’s seascapes…. Irrepressible gushings of white, consolations of emerald, unmistakeably conveying – as one enters this show – the taste for immediate directness….
… Serene and untouchable, they seem quite unconcerned with the niceties of analytical distinctions: such is their essence that one can neither conceive them outside nature, nor take them for a metaphysical synthesis between reigns: they just are, without any tinge of funambulist volubleness, without that experimental enormousness typical of the space of pure probability, the one which would make a writer, say Pinget, create aberrant beings, such as tiger-birds and stork-horses….”[iii]
By contrast, more than a decade later in 1982, in a 155-page introduction entitled ‘Romanian Painting’ written in English, Vasile Florea condenses Ion Pacea’s entry to just five lines:
“Ion Pacea (born 1924) is mainly concerned with a solid construction of forms, with clear contours separating the various planes, and his penchant for simplification and stylisation often leads him into the area of Abstract Art.”[iv] [Written by Alex Popescu, December 2016]
[i] Calin Dan, ‘Ion Pacea’ in Oxford Art Online. Retrieved 19/07/2016.
[ii] Le Modernisme Roumain, Exhibition Catalogue (Tajan: Paris, 20-26 October 2009).
[iii] Dan Haulica introducing Ion Pacea, Catalogue (Uniunea Artistilor Plastici din R.S. Romania: Bucharest, 1975/6?)
[iv] Vasile Florea, Romanian Painting (Meridiane Publishing House: Bucharest, 1982), p.150. This book was given to Tyler by Corneliu Petrescu with the following inscription: “to Geoffrey – because he is a great collector of Romanian art – with love – Corneliu, January ’83.”
</div
TRENDS REGARDING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY IN ROMANIA
No full textWorld economy is experiencing some important transformations, mainly due to the rapid evolution of the informational and communication technologies. In the last years, new technologies flooded the production processes. They have allowed the improvement of the processing and use of the economic information and the general accelaration of the economic flows. The technological revolution is presented in all its trade forms, either the wholesale trade or the retail trade. The technical progress interferes with the economic activity through the re-engineering of the production lines, the revolution in the field of building materials and store, shopping center, malls and industrial hall building, the considerably shorter time period these are being built and they become available for the commercial activity, the revolution in the field of supply, merchandise storage and manipulation, the appearance of different types of intelligent machineries and equipment, merchandise storage software improving the way the client is served at the counter. The industrial revolution determines a reorganization of the economic activity, a resetting of the trade economic activity by directing the trader towards the client using new commercial techniques and strategies.technology, technological revolution, technical progress, development, production, trade, improvement of the trade activity
Ion Idriess, author, 1953
No full textIon Idriess, author, sitting at a desk reading his book "Lightning Ridge
- …
