57. Silence [1978]

Every canvas signed by Sabin Bălașa is indeed an open window to the cosmos. In his endless world, the most solemn moment is when the blue color is born. "Blue is the farthest light, it's the immensity where all colors and all shapes are resolved and reborn, it's truth, the ideal, eternity," Sabin Bălașa would say about the color that would mark his entire work. Thus, his work, which represents a pillar of contemporary Romanian art, stands out for its overflowing originality. Sabin Bălașa aims to access the subconscious, to bring back the astral connections and the vastness of the universe to the viewer's reach. His artistic core focuses on the relationship between man and divinity, actively participating in the construction of a spiritual binder. In the painter's work, man becomes the muse of the sky, and is closely linked to the cosmos. With each work, we observe the ardent desire that the artist nourishes for deeper knowledge, which surpasses the generally valid limits. The painter's cosmos is populated by beings with feminine and masculine traits caught at the antipode between the spiritual and the palpable world. His characters embark on an initiatory journey, often accompanied by animals that protect their path to light. Sabin Bălașa's protagonists are unmistakable, without being easily integrated into a certain human typology. In the 70s, Bălașa devoted himself to figurative painting, creating a work that combines the earthly with the unreal. His compositions from this period are perfectly balanced, forming an intrinsic union between form and content. Thus, the painter dedicates entire cycles to the themes that obsess him, building a personal myth around them. The present work, "Quiet", is part of a larger series of works from the 70's-80's, for example: "Nudes", "Daydreaming", "Wave", which target the same compositional thematics. Sabin Bălașa created a perfectly balanced universe, in which man is in the center of his works. In this composition, the nude is the core of the work, and the blue of the sea appears in completion of the ineffable. The duality of the work is exposed by the continuous oscillation between palpable existence, marked by nudity, and the eternal, spiritual one, represented by the sea. As man has to cross ephemeral pleasure to reach the feeling of eternity. The chromatics of the painting emphasizes the state of quietness through shades of homogeneous blue. The palette harmoniously complements brown and yellow. Sabin Bălașa's work impresses beyond the images, the viewer entering into a meditative trance, surrounded by the infinity of the blue.

References

FLOREA, Vasile, "Sabin Bălașa", Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1984 SPIRIDON, Ioana, "Sabin Bălașa, Blue", Art Safari, Bucharest, 2020

Dimensions

width 55 cm, height 46.5 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed and dated bottom right, in brown, "Sabin Bălașa, (19)78"

Research information

A version of the work is reproduced in the catalog "Blue. Sabin Bălașa", Ioana Spiridon, Art Safari, Bucharest, 2020, under the name "Nudes", page 86.

Dating

1978

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