Radio România Internațional

Tag: fine arts

  • The Zambaccian museum in Bucharest

    The Zambaccian museum in Bucharest



    One of Bucharests interesting museums lies in the northern part of the city, which is actually a residential area where the development of property and the increasingly urbanized character saw their heyday in the inter-war period. The Krikor H. Zambaccian museum is venued by purpose-built premises, capable of hosting a fine art collection. The museum is the brainchild of a merchant with a special personality. He was an art aficionado, also willing to give artists a hand. Born in 1889 in Constanta, in the south-east, Krikor Zambaccian hailed from an Armenian family. He continued the merchant tradition of the family, first in his native city then in Bucharest, where he relocated in 1923. However, fins arts remined his passion throughout. Museographer with the Art Collections Museum, Ilinca Damian, provided the details.



    Ilinca Damian:



    “The family moved to Bucharest, also developing their trade in Romanias capital city. All his life Zambaccian was in the fabric printing business and in the textile material trade, in a broader sense. Apart from that, his great passion was collecting fine art objects, in principal Romanian paintings and in the subsidiary, French paintings. Zambaccian discovered his passion for art when he was a student in Paris. In between accounting and economics courses he found the time to visit art galleries and museums, also taking part in conferences and debates. That is how Zambaccian became a self-made man in the field of fine arts. He succeeded to befriend some of the French artists, such as Henri Matisse. When he returned to Romania, he also befriended the Romanian artists of his generation. Gradually, Krikor Zambaccian began to structure his collection.”



    That occurred properly after he relocated to Bucharest, in 1923. We recall that the items he had purchased before that year, in his first attempt to start a collection, got lost during World War One. The first fine art works he purchased as a collector were authored by the artists he had already befriended.



    Ilinca Damian:



    “All his life he maintained a close friendship with painter Gh. Petrascu. Every so often he would buy works created by the maestro, whom he visited on Sundays, he also had a close friendship with Th. Pallady, who visited Zambaccian in his study. Also, he was a friend of Nicolae Tonitza, temporarily, he was also a friend of Francisc Sirato. Actually, he was a friend of almost all the artists of the time, supporting them all his life to the best of his abilities. So, apart from his fine art collector activity, he also was a Maecenas of fine artists..Just like any other art collector of the time, Zambaccian knew how to add to his collection works by the so-called “forefathers of Romanian modern art”, the likes of Nicolae Grigorescu, Ion Andreescu, Ștefan Luchian, as well as Theodor Aman. The selection of Luchians paintings he purchased was acclaimed from the very beginning. Zambaccian himself did not mince his words saying he dedicated Stefan Luchian an altar, in his collection. Also, he was generous enough to pay good money for the paintings he purchased directly from the artists themselves of from other collectors. He believed a work of quality deserved being purchased for a good price, so he would always offer more money rather than start a negotiation.



    In time, Zambaccians collection was growing, so he needed proper premises for the storage and display of the paintings. In the early 1940s, Krikor Zambaccian had a house built, which had been thought out as a museum but also as lodgings. It is the building of the Zambaccian museum we can still see today.



    Ilinca Damian:



    “In 1942, works for the building had already been completed, and visiting was allowed once a week. Zambaccian had though it out it out as a museum, but he obviously lived there until the year of his death, 1962. The house was designed in the modernist style. Actually, it was a medley of styles, from the neo-Romanian to the minimalist one, also having Moorish influences. So we can say the house had rather an eclectic style, but the main trend was the modernist one quite all right. The idea of opening a museum occurred to Zambaccian as early as 1932-1933. Even before he had the house built he initiated talks with the municipality of Bucharest, but they failed to reach an agreement as to the premises where the works of art would be exhibited. The initial plan was to donate the art collection stored in the house he lived in at that time, which was obviously inappropriate for exhibiting and visiting purposes. Negotiations with the municipality had no positive outcome, yet Zambaccian was adamant in fulfilling his wish, that of creating an open-to-everybody museum. So the 1940s he had his own house built, which clearly had that purpose, and in 1947 he succeeded to donate his Romanian art collection to the state. The donation proper was completed in three stages, in 1947, 1957 and 1962, the year of his death. As we speak, the collection includes 300 works of Romanian and European painting and sculpture.”



    During the communist regime, the collection was unfortunately taken to other premises, it was a museum of several art collections, while Zambaccians house was used for purposes that were different from what the collectors initial intended. In the early 2000, in the wake of a large-scale restoration process, the collection was returned to its original building. Today, the Zambaccian residence but also the collection are open to visitors, just as their creator and initial owner wanted.


    (Translation by Eugen Nasta)




  • Cultural Bucharest

    Cultural Bucharest

    The Cotroceni Palace in Bucharest used to be a royal
    residence. Today it is the main building of the Presidential Administration.
    Right opposite to it, in the posh Cotroceni area, we can find two memorial
    houses dedicated to two of Romania’s interwar writers. They were so different
    from one another in terms of writing, yet they were so close in mundane life:
    they were actually close friends. They are prose writer Liviu Rebreanu and poet
    Ion Minulescu. In the former case, the museum-apartment bears the name of Liviu
    Rebreanu and his wife, Fanny Rebreanu, with the apartment being the only one
    such site in Bucharest where then the family’s domestic atmosphere has been
    recomposed; so was the writer’s study with his bookcase and the writer’s
    personal items. Liviu Rebreanu was a member of the Romanian Academy and a
    dignitary holding quite a few official positions. A textbook prose writer,
    Liviu Rebreanu was born in Transylvania, at a time when Transylvania was still
    part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Among other things, Liviu Rebreanu is
    remembered as the author who captured the psychology of his characters in an
    utterly realistic manner. Rebreanu was born in 1885 and died in 1944, shortly
    before the communist regime was instated in Romania. In 1934, he bought the
    apartment in Cotroceni for his adoptive daughter, Puia-Florica Rebreanu. Liviu
    Rebreanu never lived there, yet the house has emphatically preserved the daily
    life of the family’s intimacy. Here is museographer Adrian David, with details
    on that.


    The residence has quite aptly earned
    the status of Liviu Rebreanu Memorial House because, after the writer died in
    Valea Mare, near Pitesti, his wife move to this apartment with her daughter and
    son-in-law, and here they transferred whatever it was that they could retrieve from the writer’s former real estate property. The apartment, today known as the
    Rebreanu Memorial House was donated to
    the Museum of Romanian Literature in 1992 by the writer’s adoptive daughter,
    Puia Rebreanu. When the former owner dies in 1995 and following a time when the
    residence was refurbished, the apartment entered the museum circuit, in effect
    belonging to the Romanian state, together


    So those who, at present, may want to get the chance
    to know Rebreanu in the intimacy of his family, can travel to the Cotroceni
    area and visit the little block of flats where the museum-apartment can be
    found.

    Museographer Adrian David:


    Rebreanu’s desk, where he sat down and
    wrote his entire work…Those who come visit may notice, for instance, near the desk,
    the oriental table for the writer’s coffee serving set, these two items were
    always there since he was a coffee addict and a night-time writer. We’ve got
    Rebreanu’s lamp, owl-shaped and which Rebreanu had on the desk all the time. We
    have a clock Rebreanu brought for himself from his native Transylvania which
    back then was under Austrian-Hungarian occupation, It was an imperial clock, which
    took him back to the native region he had no choice other than leaving and
    relocating to the Old Kingdom. But over and above anything else,
    attention-grabbing for those who step into the memorial house is the lavish
    display of fine art. There are a great many works, most of them authored by
    some of Rebreanu’s friends, some of them were even made in Liviu Rebreanu’s
    house. For instance, in the lobby there are three portraits drawn by Iosif
    Iser. There were there after the 1913 Christmas, held in the Rebreanus’ house,
    where among the guests were painters Camil Ressu, Iosif Iser, alongside other
    very good friends. During that Christmas evening the fir-tree was on fire because
    of the candles, and, according to Puia Rebreanu’s own account, all the presents
    they received for Christmas were burned. But, she said, thank God Iosif Iser’s
    drawings remained intact, bringing back the memories of that day. Also, there
    are many icons, all of them from Transylvania. Rebreanu was very religious and
    very superstitious.


    In stark contrast with Liviu Rebreanu, another author
    lived in the adjoining apartment. He was symbolist poet Ion Minulescu, who was
    born in 1881 and who died also in 1944. His verse was extremely popular among
    the sentimental youth of that time. Even the design of that home, which was a
    lot more spacious, was different, as the imprint was that of a much more
    bohemian atmosphere as against the restraint of the Rebreanu residence.

    Adrian
    David:


    The block of flats where both memorial houses can be found, that of Ion
    Minulescu and that of Liviu Rebreanu, was brought into service in 1934. Back in
    the day it was known as the Professors’ Block of flats and was purpose-built
    for the teaching staff. Ion Minulescu’s wife, poet Claudia Millian, was a
    high-school teacher and a principal. Liviu Rebreanu got hold of the apartment
    with the help of Ion Minulescu, who facilitated Rebreanu a loan from the
    Teaching Staff Center. In the meantime, the two writers’ wives and daughters
    became friends. Actually, in the Ion Minulescu Claudia Millian Memorial
    House, all family members are represented in equal proportion, since, apart
    from Ion Minulescu, with whom we are very familiar, his wife and daughter were
    also artists and writers. Claudia graduated form the Conservatory of Dramatic
    Art, while Mioara Minulescu, their daughter, initially read Letters and the
    French language. Actually, Claudia Millian also studied with the Fine Arts
    Academy in the country and in Paris, while Mioara Minulescu studied at the Fine
    Arts Academy in Rome. And indeed, here, on the premises, there are a great many
    works signed by the two: mosaics, paintings, sculptures and various works of
    art.


    Apart from the two landlords’ works of art, the
    memorial house also plays host to the work of some friends of the family.

    Adrian David:


    With Minulescu, there are more than
    100 paintings. There are a couple of dozen sculptures. All signed by great
    names of the domestic fine arts, part of whom were very good friends of Claudia
    Milian’s. Her best friends were Cecilia Cuțescu- Storck and her sister, Ortansa
    Satmari.


    In the mid-1990s, after the death of the two writers’
    daughters, Puia Rebreanu and Mioara Minulescu, the two apartments were donated
    to the state so that they could be turned into memorial houses highlighting the
    activity of the two writers, but also the personality of the women who stood by
    their side.




  • Cultural Bucharest

    Cultural Bucharest

    The Cotroceni Palace in Bucharest used to be a royal
    residence. Today it is the main building of the Presidential Administration.
    Right opposite to it, in the posh Cotroceni area, we can find two memorial
    houses dedicated to two of Romania’s interwar writers. They were so different
    from one another in terms of writing, yet they were so close in mundane life:
    they were actually close friends. They are prose writer Liviu Rebreanu and poet
    Ion Minulescu. In the former case, the museum-apartment bears the name of Liviu
    Rebreanu and his wife, Fanny Rebreanu, with the apartment being the only one
    such site in Bucharest where then the family’s domestic atmosphere has been
    recomposed; so was the writer’s study with his bookcase and the writer’s
    personal items. Liviu Rebreanu was a member of the Romanian Academy and a
    dignitary holding quite a few official positions. A textbook prose writer,
    Liviu Rebreanu was born in Transylvania, at a time when Transylvania was still
    part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Among other things, Liviu Rebreanu is
    remembered as the author who captured the psychology of his characters in an
    utterly realistic manner. Rebreanu was born in 1885 and died in 1944, shortly
    before the communist regime was instated in Romania. In 1934, he bought the
    apartment in Cotroceni for his adoptive daughter, Puia-Florica Rebreanu. Liviu
    Rebreanu never lived there, yet the house has emphatically preserved the daily
    life of the family’s intimacy. Here is museographer Adrian David, with details
    on that.


    The residence has quite aptly earned
    the status of Liviu Rebreanu Memorial House because, after the writer died in
    Valea Mare, near Pitesti, his wife move to this apartment with her daughter and
    son-in-law, and here they transferred whatever it was that they could retrieve from the writer’s former real estate property. The apartment, today known as the
    Rebreanu Memorial House was donated to
    the Museum of Romanian Literature in 1992 by the writer’s adoptive daughter,
    Puia Rebreanu. When the former owner dies in 1995 and following a time when the
    residence was refurbished, the apartment entered the museum circuit, in effect
    belonging to the Romanian state, together


    So those who, at present, may want to get the chance
    to know Rebreanu in the intimacy of his family, can travel to the Cotroceni
    area and visit the little block of flats where the museum-apartment can be
    found.

    Museographer Adrian David:


    Rebreanu’s desk, where he sat down and
    wrote his entire work…Those who come visit may notice, for instance, near the desk,
    the oriental table for the writer’s coffee serving set, these two items were
    always there since he was a coffee addict and a night-time writer. We’ve got
    Rebreanu’s lamp, owl-shaped and which Rebreanu had on the desk all the time. We
    have a clock Rebreanu brought for himself from his native Transylvania which
    back then was under Austrian-Hungarian occupation, It was an imperial clock, which
    took him back to the native region he had no choice other than leaving and
    relocating to the Old Kingdom. But over and above anything else,
    attention-grabbing for those who step into the memorial house is the lavish
    display of fine art. There are a great many works, most of them authored by
    some of Rebreanu’s friends, some of them were even made in Liviu Rebreanu’s
    house. For instance, in the lobby there are three portraits drawn by Iosif
    Iser. There were there after the 1913 Christmas, held in the Rebreanus’ house,
    where among the guests were painters Camil Ressu, Iosif Iser, alongside other
    very good friends. During that Christmas evening the fir-tree was on fire because
    of the candles, and, according to Puia Rebreanu’s own account, all the presents
    they received for Christmas were burned. But, she said, thank God Iosif Iser’s
    drawings remained intact, bringing back the memories of that day. Also, there
    are many icons, all of them from Transylvania. Rebreanu was very religious and
    very superstitious.


    In stark contrast with Liviu Rebreanu, another author
    lived in the adjoining apartment. He was symbolist poet Ion Minulescu, who was
    born in 1881 and who died also in 1944. His verse was extremely popular among
    the sentimental youth of that time. Even the design of that home, which was a
    lot more spacious, was different, as the imprint was that of a much more
    bohemian atmosphere as against the restraint of the Rebreanu residence.

    Adrian
    David:


    The block of flats where both memorial houses can be found, that of Ion
    Minulescu and that of Liviu Rebreanu, was brought into service in 1934. Back in
    the day it was known as the Professors’ Block of flats and was purpose-built
    for the teaching staff. Ion Minulescu’s wife, poet Claudia Millian, was a
    high-school teacher and a principal. Liviu Rebreanu got hold of the apartment
    with the help of Ion Minulescu, who facilitated Rebreanu a loan from the
    Teaching Staff Center. In the meantime, the two writers’ wives and daughters
    became friends. Actually, in the Ion Minulescu Claudia Millian Memorial
    House, all family members are represented in equal proportion, since, apart
    from Ion Minulescu, with whom we are very familiar, his wife and daughter were
    also artists and writers. Claudia graduated form the Conservatory of Dramatic
    Art, while Mioara Minulescu, their daughter, initially read Letters and the
    French language. Actually, Claudia Millian also studied with the Fine Arts
    Academy in the country and in Paris, while Mioara Minulescu studied at the Fine
    Arts Academy in Rome. And indeed, here, on the premises, there are a great many
    works signed by the two: mosaics, paintings, sculptures and various works of
    art.


    Apart from the two landlords’ works of art, the
    memorial house also plays host to the work of some friends of the family.

    Adrian David:


    With Minulescu, there are more than
    100 paintings. There are a couple of dozen sculptures. All signed by great
    names of the domestic fine arts, part of whom were very good friends of Claudia
    Milian’s. Her best friends were Cecilia Cuțescu- Storck and her sister, Ortansa
    Satmari.


    In the mid-1990s, after the death of the two writers’
    daughters, Puia Rebreanu and Mioara Minulescu, the two apartments were donated
    to the state so that they could be turned into memorial houses highlighting the
    activity of the two writers, but also the personality of the women who stood by
    their side.




  • The Art Safari 2020 retrospective exhibition

    The Art Safari 2020 retrospective exhibition


    The month of September this year saw the 7th
    edition taking place, of an eagerly-awaited event: the Bucharest Art Pavilion -
    Art Safari. The event draw to a close two months ago, and the other day we sat
    down and spoke to the Art Safari director, Ioana Ciocan. Ioana had a look back
    at the event, offering us several conclusions.


    As an absolute first in the history
    of the event, the Bucharest Art Pavilion – Art Safari was held on two separate
    premises: the Victoria Tower, an impressive building located on Victoria Road,
    at the heart of Bucharest, and in the AFI Cotroceni Mall, which was an
    extremely surprising space. We picked AFI Cotroceni because we thought it was
    easier, it was more accessible for us to take art particularly where people
    are. If people are in the mall, then the decision we took was quite natural,
    that of having an art pavilion in the mall. So we built a satellite there, with
    all sorts of artistic, interactive installations, made for the entire family,
    where, of course, access was free. Another interesting thing about Art Safari
    was that it could also be visited at night. So, night after night, from
    September 11 and all through to September 27, small groups of visitors enjoyed
    guided tours as well as musical performances. This year, given the trying circumstances
    we’ve been through, we had to take into account a couple of measures that are
    part of the new normality already: social distancing, wearing the ear-loop mask
    and there was something else, something very important, access to Art Safari
    was granted to small groups of people. Practically, for the Victoria Tower’s
    11,000 square meters surface area, we allowed no more than 175 people to visit Art
    Safari. We complied with the recommendation we got from the Ministry of Culture
    and the Healthcare Ministry as we wanted to make sure the visits to the Art
    Safari Museums were completely safe.


    Ioana Ciocan gave us detailed info on the two
    exhibitions that were part of Art Safari, which enjoyed the greatest success with
    the visitors – the Sabin Balasa Pavilion and the Gheorghe Petrascu Pavilion.

    Ioana Ciocan:


    After the lockdown we had to comply
    with earlier this year, we realized how much we missed cultural events. We were
    happy because, under these very difficult circumstances, we were able to mount
    the 7th edition of Art Safari. The pavilion bearing the name of Sabin Balasa, a contemporary painter who was
    famous before but also after the anticommunist revolution, was laid out in the
    entire surface area of a floor of the building. Each of Sabin Balasa’s
    canvasses was some sort of incursion into a quite uncanny cosmic universe,
    peopled with feminine and masculine beings captured in initiatic journeys of
    various kinds. We got a loan from Romania’s Chamber of Deputies, a valuable
    one, which was also a one-of-a kind loan, eight of Sabin Balasa’s big-size canvasses
    were offered on loan by them. We very much wanted Ceausescu’s and his wife’s
    portraits to be included in Art Safari, we couldn’t get them, unfortunately, it
    would have been relevant for visitors to know it was not only a blue cosmic
    universe Sabin Balasa painted, but also propaganda works. On the first floor of
    the building in Victoria Road, the museum pavilion was entirely dedicated to
    Gheorghe Petrascu, one of Romanian fine art’s most popular painters, a great
    master, whose works were last put together in an exhibition in 1972.


    Art Safari came up with a surprise exhibition for the
    Eastern-European space.

    Ioana Ciocan:


    In 2020, the International Pavilion
    was dedicated to a form of rebel art brought over from the US: Guerilla Girls.
    The group of feminists was founded in New York in 1985, while for its
    representation in Bucharest, Guerilla Girls curated a historic exhibition, an
    exhibition comprising the fine art group’s most famous and most relevant works,
    dated 1985, but also works form the 1990s and the year 2000. The group was set
    up as a form of protest against gender differences in the museums across USA,
    and not only there, this year at Romania’s National Art Museum we saw an
    exhibition including all-male works. So the 1985 Guerilla Girls protest has not
    reached Bucharest yet, that’s why we were happy we had the privilege to host that
    historic group as an absolute first, not only in Romania, but in this part of
    Europe as well.


    The visitors’ reaction to the interactive exhibition
    offer as well as to Art Safari’s offer for the little ones was extraordinary,
    the art-loving kids, that is.

    Ioana Ciocan:


    The ‘Bucharest School’ pavilion,
    curated by Silvia Rogozea, sought to offer a complete picture of the last 30
    years of Bucharest fine art. For their works to be selected for the exhibition,
    their authors needn’t have been Bucharesters, born and bred, or educated in
    Bucharest, but at a crucial point in their lives, the artists need to have had
    a close connection with Bucharest. It was an eclectic exhibition, very popular
    with the visitors, photographs of the exhibition were taken on a large scale. An
    Art Safari hashtag on the Instagram gives us access to the most successful
    angles of the ‘Bucharest School’ exhibition. The exhibition also had an audio
    installation, jointly made with Ana Banica, an artist the visitors loved very
    much, especially the younger public. The Children’s pavilion was something
    unique in Art safari. We asked the little ones to send us works they made
    during the lockdown we had earlier this year. We found it absolutely
    fascinating to receive their works, on paper, canvas, collages, photographs,
    magazine clips – for the children, it was a universe which took shape at a time
    which was very difficult for them. But it was all the more delighting for us to
    see the little the ones coming at Art Safari and seeing their works on display
    in a museum as an absolute first. So we would like to continue with the
    children’s pavilion in the 2021 edition as well.


    Ioana Ciocan:


    The team’s tremendous effort to mount
    Art Safari against the backdrop of the pandemic was warmly rewarded by the
    visitors’ enthusiasm. We were once again happy when we saw people queuing up
    for art, just as it happens in all renowned international exhibitions. Bucharesters,
    and not only them, were queuing up for Art Safari just as they do when
    they visit the great international museums. So we were happy to have been able
    to offer lovers of art a contemporary visiting experience, perfectly adapted to
    the times we live in. It was a collection edition, indeed, and I should like to
    take this opportunity and invite you to be part of Art Safari. This year we had
    more than 80 youngsters who opted for doing volunteer work in the field of art,
    with Art Safari, it was a team of volunteer high-school students from
    high-schools in Bucharest, they are definitely a source of inspiration for the
    younger generations. So we invite you to visit Art Safari, but also to do
    volunteer work as part of such a great cultural project.

    (Translation by Eugen Nasta)







  • Art Selfie Arrives in Romania

    Art Selfie Arrives in Romania

    September is an anniversary month
    for Google, especially this year. On September 27, Google celebrated its 20th
    anniversary, when Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page opened the first
    Google office in a garage. It was restored to almost exactly its original 1998
    look, and it can be seen as such on Google Maps Street View.


    In 20 years,
    Google never ceased to come up with surprises. One of the most recent fun
    creations they put out is an attempt to allow users to experiment art in a
    personal manner. Art Selfie takes the face of a person from a selfie and finds
    its closest match in a work of art stored in the Google Arts and Culture
    galleries.


    Google Arts
    & Culture has associations with 1,500 galleries and institutions in 70
    countries, giving them access to as many on-line images as possible. Google’s
    slogans, according to The Independent,
    are ‘Be Your Own Curator’, and ‘Find Your Preferences, Create Your Own
    Collection, and Share with Your Friends’.


    The Art Selfie
    app works on Android and iOS. Google does not use the resulting picture for its
    own purposes, only keeping it until the results are delivered.


    Gabriela
    Chiorean, Google Communication Manager for Central and Eastern Europe, told us
    about Art Selfie:


    Art Selfie started out as an exciting solution to experience art. It is
    a way to find your affinities with currents in art. You take a photo, and our
    platform finds your match in fine art, in the Google Arts and Culture
    Galleries. It was launched in January 2018, and initially it was available only
    in a few countries, mainly English speaking, but last week it was made
    available worldwide, including Romania. We saw a very good reaction early in
    the year, where in the few countries it was available we had 78 million
    pictures taken. In Romania we had an equally enthusiastic response. As we can
    see in Romania, people have a great appetite for experimenting with art, not
    just physically, but also in terms of knowledge. Each time we have art related
    products, we get a great response in Romania, which is great.


    You may think you resemble a face
    from a painting by Tonitza or Grigorescu. Or maybe you think you look like Mona
    Lisa or the Girl with the Pearl Earring. Anything is possible. Unfortunately,
    it is up to the system to make the association. Gabriela Chiorean:


    I tried to find my art twin, and I found out that I could be a man, or
    a child. Generally, even if the twin may be a surprise, it is a good way of
    discovering something new. We’ve had surprising reactions, for instance we had
    a situation in which a woman in the US found her selfie associated with a
    portrait of her grandmother. There have also been situations where people were
    not impressed with their associated image, but you have to understand that this
    is not a 100% accurate match, they are made through machine learning that
    compares facial features. I can give you an example: Elen DeGeneres, the famous
    talk show host, was matched with The Birth of Venus by Boticelli. Of course, many matches were not flattering, but there
    are some surprises, like my match, which was with a man, but at least it was a
    nobleman.


    With this joke, Gabriela Chiorean
    went on to tell us where this experiment is going:


    Right now we have over 60 partners all over the world, but there will
    be more in the future, definitely. I hope that one day we can add to the
    twinning project the museums in Romania. The face match can take you all over
    the world. The Google Arts and Culture platform has digitalized collections of
    works from over 1,500 collections, in over 70 countries. In Romania we already
    have 10 partnerships, and if you want to see who these partners are, you can go
    to our website or download the app that matches you with paintings across the
    world.


    Gabriela Chiorean told us about the
    cultural value of this app:


    This way of getting to know art may
    be superficial, using a selfie to getting familiar with art, but in fact
    it is a great way to know more, not just about art in your own country, but art
    across the world.


    A simple selfie can now be a tool to
    discover art, the end result providing information about the painting, the
    artist who created it, and the collections and museums that house it.


    (Translated by C. Cotoiu)

  • Fine Art in Sibiu and Brasov

    Fine Art in Sibiu and Brasov


    Nicolae Daicu, president of the Fine Artists Union in Brasov, in central Romania, has presented his works at numerous exhibitions in Romania and abroad, in countries like France, Luxembourg, Denmark and Japan.After he graduated from the Arts High School in Brasov, in 1971, he decided to take up sculpture so he enrolled with the Institute of Fine and Decorative Arts in Cluj. He opened his first exhibition during his student years. Nicolae Daicu, who is also a teacher with the Fine Arts High School, believes in the educational value of art:



    “Ive been working with this high school for 38 years and all this time I have never got bored, as spending so time around teenagers has helped me stay young as well. Unfortunately there are cases of young teachers who abandon their profession after only one year, as there are insufficient teaching positions for them. Although I teach sculpture, I can honestly say I often leave it aside in favor of some direct talks with my students, about issues they should in fact be approaching with their parents or other teachers. This is one of the reasons why two years ago they voted me teacher of the year. I was very happy about it and I realized they picked me because we talk a lot, I answer them to the most varied questions and together we take the liberty to have a free way of thinking which allows us to travel the world. I also have students who are unable to walk and come to school in a wheelchair. I find it extraordinary that they have pushed their limits and decided to take the best in life. I also have a student with the Down syndrome but his colleagues welcomed him in the warmest way possible, they accepted him and made him one of their own.”



    Nicolae Daicu has been the head of the Fine Artists Union in Brasov for ten years. Set up in 1946 by a group of local artists, this has been the first such union in Romania.



    “I dont know who adopted who, but we live in a symbiosis that is good for us. Five years ago I tried to set up a museum of contemporary art based on donations from artists. We have gathered over 340 works, but since I havent found a venue for them yet, although I have asked the local authorities for support, I plan on setting up a virtual museum. As for my work as an artist, you should not think that inspiration comes while the artist is having a coffee. Inspiration needs to be constantly challenged. And to challenge it means to work. I make bronze works and discovering old working techniques has always been a challenge.”



    Nicolae Daicu has 18 monumental works in several Romanian localities. One of them is the statue of the late metropolitan bishop Andrei Saguna, displayed in front of the high school with the same name. Another important work is the 8-meter high Time Column, in the Prejmer locality, where a workshop was held in 1994, and also the monument of Avram Iancu, in front of the Metrom plant. April 25th, 2005, the day when Romania signed the EU accession treaty in Luxembourg, was a very special day for sculptor Nicolae Daicu, as he exhibited his most representative works in that vibrant city. One of the sculptures, a bust of Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu, was the gift the sculptor made to the exhibitions organizers.



    “My whole life has been connected to glass making. My father was a glass-maker himself. Near my native village, which is close to the town of Satu Mare, there was the glass factory in Poiana Codrului, the first in Romania. As a child, I had the chance to see glass-makers at work and I loved it. To this day I strongly believe the glass-maker is not a simple worker, but an artist. I practically started from scratch,” says Ion Tamaian, the head of the Ion Art Glass atelier in Selimbar, Sibiu county, who is also the head of the Sibiu branch of the Fine Artists Union. Objects such as glasses, bowls, perfume bottles and vases are being made at the Ion Art Glass atelier. Ion Tamaian:



    “We can manufacture here anything that we want and we are constantly trying to stick to the idea that we start from. Of course, when making glass objects we sometimes encounter technical difficulties, and we try to overcome them as we go. So I could not say there is something that we cant do. Of course the glass technology has its limits but if you are a talented glass-maker, a talented artist and technologist there are no limits to reaching your goal and solutions can be found to anything. Im sometimes approached by people who tell me they want a certain object and they even come up with sketches and with technical solutions. We talk, we exchange opinions and try to make an original glass object.”



    The most expensive artwork ever made by Ion Art Glass atelier was entitled “Portal” and was sold to a private art collector in the US for 35,000 dollars. Some of the Christmas balls manufactured at the workshop in Selimbar even reached the White House and adorned the Christmas tree there. Ion Tamaian:



    “Utility and utility-art objects are exhibited. Tourists from all over the world come to visit out the workshop, as this place is already famous abroad due to its participation in international exhibitions. For this reason, many of the tourists to Transylvania want to pay us a visit. We always show them the whole process of making glass objects and we even let them model the objects themselves, something that they are very happy to do. This is a workshop that has passed the test of time. We resisted on the market because we focused on exports. Its the exports that helped us succeed, as we had exhibitions in various parts of the world, such as the US, which has a very good market and also China, the Nordic countries and Brazil. The real challenge is to be able to keep the standards high and still manage to sell art in difficult economic contexts. By displaying our works at international fairs we manage to keep in touch with important art galleries worldwide.”