102. Apples

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102. Apples

Sorin Ilfoveanu

1946, Câmpulung Muscel

Estimate:

EUR 700 - 1.000

Sold

EUR 1.200

ulei pe pânză, 27 x 41 cm, signed and dated upper right, in brown, Ilfoveanu, 1987

Material / Carats

oil on canvas

For more than 30 years since his exhibition debut, Sorin Ilfoveanu has compelled us to acknowledge his drawing signature, over the structure of which color rarely finds its place. Take for example this small canvas (small compared to the large canvases that will follow) probably made in Rădești, Pitești county (1987), in the summer house he had recently purchased (1985). It is the era when still lifes alternate with landscapes created in the same rural context. Old, popular objects probably weren't missing from the recently purchased household, and the artist's inclination towards these pieces, with museological value, is not hard to decipher. Sliding from the technological system to the cultural one, freed in its functional objectivity, the clothes beater becomes an expressive support for some apples. Over time, the coherence of the technological system has been continually modified and disturbed. The former rationality of objects, closely linked to a ritual of gestures, now takes on a random or secondary significance. Ilfoveanu uses this impasse to endow the object with other aesthetic values. Coupled, the apples and clothes beater auto-enhance in the hieratism of expression, becoming an essence-sign, enriching the language through which the painter communicates with the viewer. Asceticism, in which Ilfoveanu feels best, doesn't compromise complex communication. Following the old bodegon, in alliance with a civilization he would later fall in love with, dedicating entire drawing cycles to it (I'm obviously referring to South-American literature), the artist maximizes a subject of overwhelming simplicity. (R.G.)

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