Roxana Scripcaru
Head of the Romanian Postmodern & Contemporary Art Evaluation Office
138. The Pear Festival [2025]
The photos of the lot are informative and indicative, and cannot provide a highly detailed view of the object from all angles. We recommend a careful physical inspection of the lot before bidding.
138. The Pear Festival [2025]
1951, Vânjuleț
Estimate:
EUR 5.000 - 8.000
Sold
EUR 11.000
References
MAZILU, Georges, "Hybrid Faces", Tribuna Publishing, Cluj-Napoca, 2020.
acrylic on canvas, 89 x 116 cm, signed bottom right, in black, "Mazilu"; signed and titled on the back, in black, "Mazilu, The pear festival"
At the antipodes between contemporary surrealism and the influence of Northern Renaissance art, Georges Mazilu amplifies the theatricality of the world composed by juxtaposing the aesthetics of the ugly, consecrated by Charles Baudelaire, and the timeless dimension of beauty. With an all-encompassing expressive force, Mazilu shapes the pictorial structure akin to the Old Masters. The preamble of his artistic universe encompasses satirical images, with anthropomorphic characters, meant to become aggravated pictorial metaphors. Moving to Paris, Georges Mazilu will use estrangement from his own roots, like a key element in his future works. Marked by this transition period, the painter will found his art on the background of personal emotions. Thus, his work transforms in the mid-eighties into an amalgam of inexhaustible variations that designate hybrid figures on a fantastic realm. The quintessence of his work springs from the desire to resurrect allegory and moral statement as a contemporary subject. Evoking the grotesque, his pictorial universe is under the sign of chance, his world being a theatre stage without curtains. Emerging from a world defined by illusion, Mazilu's painting is designed as an organic hybrid manifestation. The painter aims, through his works, to introduce us to the realm of superstition and the supernatural, emphasizing the idea of storytelling.
In the present work, "La fête des poires", the characters are caught in a visual drama. His partially human creatures are concentrated around a pear, a fruit that stands for isolation, becoming like the apple, a sin. The characters are engaged in an almost carnivalesque action, from which we manage to extract psychological notions about the protagonists of the work. Facial expression, gesturing, and skewed gaze are some of the defining elements of the characters present at this scene that cannot be put into exact time. His plastic discourse reflects the complexity of human feelings such as joy, sadness, naivety or duplicity. The figures of the squatty men, with yellow-rosy skin, appear to be of primordial beings that do not belong to our world. "It's a way for me to live in the company of my figures," Georges Mazilu would say about his people.
The distortion of bodies, the chromatic palette that abounds in shades of green, blue, brown, and ochre, and the perennial use of the chiaroscuro contrast provide the suggestion of volume and three-dimensionality. The message of his work is encrypted, the viewer being invited to actively participate in deciphering the metaphors found in the artist's imaginary.
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SESSION
Brought to you by
Roxana Scripcaru
Head of the Romanian Postmodern & Contemporary Art Evaluation Office
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