123. Basketball Evening [începutul anilor '40]

The contemporary artist, Alexandru Ciucurencu had an undeniable vocation for art, managing to approach subjects that offered the possibility of understanding life, as well as visual arts after the First World War. Addressing life straightforwardly in a harmonious ensemble, the painter will outline a meditative artistic world, without emphasis. The existence of his work will be concrete, without permutations, starting from the all-encompassing sensation that the vital framework of human existence requires. Ciucurencu is a sensualist, who censors his own exuberant deviations, returning, each time, to sacred rigor. Ciucurencu gets caught in the mesh of abundant coloristics, there are splits between warm and cold tones, between bright and dark surfaces. During the '40s, Alexandru Ciucurencu's compositions are detached from immediate reality, through theme and characters. The painter takes elements from the mundane everyday and transposes them onto the canvas, trying to consume them through the intensity of living. The intersection between the static and dynamic plane creates a vehement combustion in Ciucurencu's painting. His painting receives a certain distinctive vibration, always starting from sensation. Thus, the figures of his characters seem to be detached from a dreamlike framework, being painted in a nostalgic note. Suspended in time, the faces are not accentuated, but remain diffuse, in expectation. From this period, other works such as "Chess Players", "Card Players" are part of his oeuvre. In the work at hand, we can observe the same predilection for capturing spontaneous frames, in the intimacy of the home. The composition has two central characters, who are immersed in the silent game of cards, or in their own world of thoughts. Succinctly sketched, the faces impose themselves through structural harmony. The human face attracted the painter through the elements that helped him decipher morality. The work at hand captivates the viewer through the chromatic palette, but also through the card game, seemingly detached from a novel scene, where the game becomes a super-character, giving life to the painting. An almost musical chord traverses the surface of the painting through the chosen chromatic palette. Alexandru Ciucurencu uses a series of fine tones, having a slight predilection for green, gray, brown. Like a frame story, the chosen chromatic palette tells its own story in continuation of the one presented on the canvas.

References

FLOREA, Vasile, "Alexandru Ciucurencu", ARC 2000 Publishing House, Bucharest, 1995

Dimensions

width 53.5 cm, height 45.5 cm

Description

oil on canvas glued to cardboard, signed upper right, in blue, in monogram, "AC"

Research information

A version of the work is reproduced in the catalog "Alexandru Ciucurencu", George Oprescu, Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1962, page. 19, under the name "The Chess Players".

Dating

începutul anilor '40

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