76. The Catch

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76. The Catch

Nicolae Tonitza

1886, Bârlad - 1940, Bucureşti

Estimate:

EUR 8.000 - 12.000

Not sold

References

BREZIANU, Barbu, ""N. N. Tonitza"", Ed. Meridiane, Bucureşti, 1986
COMARNESCU, Petru, ""N. N. Tonitza"", Ed. Tineretului, Bucureşti, 1962
ŞORBAN, Raul, ""Nicolae Tonitza"", Ed. Meridiane, Bucureşti, 1965

oil on canvas, 44.5 x 31 cm, 31x44,5, signed and noted upper left, in black, "Tony, După Grigorescu" ("Tony, After Grigorescu")

The positioning of Nicolae Tonitza in Romanian art is undoubtedly a more complicated dissemination process than the mere “adornment” of the artist with a multitude of superlatives and more or less propagandistic epithets. This is due to the complex personality of the artist, who did not settle for persisting in the interwar period simply by his symptomatic presence in the manifestations of that time. Tonitza undertook a well-known complex activity in many areas that described and completed the image of Romanian arts in this extremely fertile period between the two world wars. Painter, sketcher and tenacious chronicler, the artist did not change the face of Romanian modernism only through the indisputable quality of the products of his painting, but also succeeded in making a mutation of values through the critical discourse that he assumed even before the outbreak of World War I. In his 30 years of journalistic activity, Tonitza wrote background articles, reports, reviews, pamphlets, essays, letters and fragments of intimate letters, which, corroborated by his paintings and drawings, manage to give us a more complete picture of the artist in his time. Thus, we can read through in a new light every new painting that comes to the surface, whether it is a landscape, a portrait, a genre scene or a still life. In the case of the last category, which includes this painting, we discover a generous range of subjects, from capturing the Romanian specificity (see works with ceramics and icons) to still lifes with fruits or more classical compositions. “The Catch”, even if it is an interpretation by Tonitza after Nicolae Grigorescu, introduces us unequivocally into the universe of Dobrogea, being an extension of the world of fishermen, fisheries and life organised around the sea. This world became a second home for Nicolae Tonitza as soon as he made Mangalia and Balchik his summer residences between 1924 and 1939.

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