22. Le Bateau [2002]

Arriving in Paris at the advice of Jean Alexandru Steriadi, Horia Damian will be enchanted by the cultural frenzy of the French capital and will approach a much freer artistic manner. He finds his inspiration in the abstractionism of Mondrian and builds a new pictorial semantics. In 1969, al Stadler gallery, his talent is praised by Yves Klein, from whose work he will take an interest in the use of a dominant colour. In his works, Horia Damian invites the watcher in an immersive journey, where the final destination is the result of his long research, which began on his arrival in France. Every work signed by him gets an autonomy and becomes an anthropological exploration of the human origin, without omitting, however, the metaphysical valences of his own semiotics. His existence is governed by cosmic and telluric geometries, which he transposes, successively, in archetypal shapes in which he encodes symbols. Alongside the series dedicated to flying machines, the steamer cycle is also intended for the presentiment of departure. From the initial representations in crayon, chalk and pencil on cardboard, the artist gets a prodigious transposition of his template into a veritable construction shrouded in mystery. Horia Damian remains thus the creator of a monumental art in which he masterfully links his pictorial fashion with his sculptural skills.

References

The catalogue of the exhibition "Horia Damian", National Museum of Contemporary Art, September-October 2009.

Dimensions

width 100 cm, height 70 cm

Description

gouache, chalk and pencil on cardboard, signed, entitled and dated bottom left, with pencil, "Damian, Le Bateau, 2002"

Research information

A version of the work is reproduced in the album published on the occasion of the "Horia Damian" exhibition held at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, September - October 2009.

Dating

2002

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