90. Presence IV ("Urban" series) [1972]

In the Bucharest which, "without being a crushing capital, is, however, a city with a tension of living, of the street, of cars, of restless people", the artist who came from patriarchal Bucovina feels unease and anxiety to a certain extent. At the same time, the year 1971 comes with significant changes at the socio-cultural and ideologic level, upon launching the "July Theses". The forced industrialization, the forced move of a significant population from the village to the city, into standardized blocks of flats, have left deep marks in the lives of numerous artists, and Martin Gherasim is no exception. This form of spiritual rupture, using industrial-urban methods, determined the author to express an increasingly heavy reality in his works. The cycle "Urban", exposed in 1973, is a customized feature report on some sad times in our history, when the fever of technological progress transformed man into a mere performer, without the gift of particularity, "the new man" wanted by the party. The message of the work is encrypted in an image influenced by pop-art in the relations between shapes and colour harmonies. "We have no time for beauty, it is the time of truth", says Ion Frunzetti about the "Urban I". The block of flats becomes a cage with horizontal and vertical bars, and the city a giant prison. Man, emptied of his individuality, is reduced to a silhouette.

Dimensions

width 160 cm, height 140 cm, custom 140 × 160 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed and entitled on the reverse, with black, "Marin Gherasim, Prezență IV, ciclul Urban"

Research information

The artwork is reproduced in the album "Marin Gherasim", Alexandru Davidian, Vellant Publishing House, Bucharest, 2019, p. 275.

Dating

1972

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