48. Waves at Constanța

In Romanian painting, Marius Bunescu became known particularly for his landscape technique. His numerous journeys served as inspiration for a long series of works he grouped, thematically, into several exhibitions. His work gradually moved from Munich's academic realism to French impressionism. His encounter with the works of artists such as Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Delacroix opened the way for him to approach a new pictorial manner and a colour palette different from the one he had used before. As a new graduate, Marius Bunescu made his first landscape attempts on the Black Sea shore, at Constanța. He transposed clear skies or skies with clouds heralding a storm, boats anchored or come adrift, floating out at sea; as well as the architecture of the buildings surrounding the sea. Water becomes the primary element in this stage of the artist’s work, and it oscillates between calm, static instances and the angry waves of the storm. He was also concerned with the issue of colours, to which he constantly returns, and which he approaches painstakingly, solving the light and colour issue with obvious resourcefulness. In this work, the boat in the foreground, tied to the shore, splits the terrestrial plane from the aquatic plane and, at the same time, it betrays the seal of a name become symbol in the artist’s work: Magda, his wife. She became a leitmotif character of Bunescu’s portraiture, and he disclosed her transition from the ebony-haired young woman to the silver-haired insertions of his later works. The cool colours are predominant in this work, due to the use of vast shades of blue, in various intensities. The waves crash on the shore and shatter the peace of the marine landscape, in which the artist harmoniously joins the human plane (by sketching two small silhouettes on the right and by naming the boat) with the natural or the architectural one, which contain the extent of the sea and the row of monumental buildings. The brushwork of the pen and the certainty of the line are still reminiscent of the academicism learned at the Munich school. (D.C.)

References

OPREA, Petre, "Marius Bunescu", Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1971.

Dimensions

width 61.5 cm, height 43.5 cm, custom 43,5 × 61,5 cm

Description

oil on cardboard, signed bottom right, in blue, "Bunescu"

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