Roxana Scripcaru
Head of the Romanian Postmodern & Contemporary Art Evaluation Office
10. Birds of the Sky [1983]
The photos of the lot are informative and indicative, and cannot provide a highly detailed view of the object from all angles. We recommend a careful physical inspection of the lot before bidding.
10. Birds of the Sky [1983]
1931, Săcueni, Bihor - 1997, Arad
Session
Estimate
Pretul de pornire si cel estimat nu sunt preturi de vanzare efective
EUR 1.500 - 2.500
Filled with anxieties and personal resurrections, Sever Frențiu was an advocate of emotion-generating paintings that spark reactions and questions. With a work that does not lose its momentum in posterity, the artist's works are loaded with symbols meant to be deciphered by the viewer. Often resorting to simultaneous narratives, Sever Frențiu naturally depicted the mysteries of surrealism, bringing to the foreground the fragments of a space split between real and fantastic. In his compositions, each object has its own journey, almost fateful. Sever Frențiu did not shy away from presenting his benchmarks and affinities, thus, we can distinguish the influence of great masters such as Dali, Magritte, and Arcimboldo. All formal references meld with the unmistakable style proposed by the artist. Thus, on the painter's canvases a nearly duplicative metamorphosis occurs, which surprises the viewer by integrating their own quintessential texture. Sever Frențiu's works raise questions through their mysterious composition. The compositions made by the artist in the '70-'80 period fall within this fantastic register, which defies the rules of the palpable universe. The painter abandons the logic of the real space and embarks on a journey through which he intends to approach the irrational. His canvases are populated by sinister figures, ghosts, animals, skeletons, faceless bodies or bodies without identity. This world incites us to decipher it, despite the borders that initially separate us from the intrigue of the picture. The atmosphere of his paintings refers to a general state of spleen, anxiety, and eroticism. This work is part of the "hunters" cycle, symbolizing the good-evil binomial. Hunting, for Sever Frențiu, is a direct treatment of the subject "individual duality struggling with oneself". Thus, the work takes on the aspect of a heterogeneous diegesis, where the hunter is caught at the antipode between good and evil. Sever Frențiu captures, in his work, human contradiction and instinctual nature. The protagonist of the work carries a dead bird at his belt, and in his arms a hawk and an ax. The need for self-preservation produces the divergence between rational and instinctual. The bird's murder represents the ending of free will, the man assuming the role of the demiurge. The two trees rising from the cement resemble Jachin and Boaz, the pillars at the entrance to Solomon's Temple. Jachin and Boaz mark the boundary between the sacred and profane, but also the duality of existence darkness-light. The bat watching over the work can be associated with the hunter's soul on a microcosmic level, and generally with human nature. The bat is blinded by light, just like man is blinded by materiality and carnal desires. Sever Frențiu's work is a narrative about human nature, which absorbs into its canvas, the struggle with oneself.
Dimensions
width 55 cm, height 55 cm
Description
oil on canvas, signed and dated bottom right, in black, "S. Frențiu, (19)83"
Dating
1983
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