63. On the way of rapeseed

Surpassing his own organic boundaries, Ion Țuculescu is known in posterity as the "amateur genius". The artist managed to dedicate himself to painting, without betraying his realistic side, profoundly shaped by science and the functionality of the human body, which he studied throughout his life. Inspired by important names in native and international plastic art such as Petrașcu and Luchian, respectively Van Gogh and Gauguin, Ion Țuculescu managed, however, to surpass the boundary of the inspirational model, and built around him, a personal, inimitable art. Thus, Țuculescu initially sought a creative stimulus in his proximity, turning towards folklore and its motifs, Mioritic landscapes and the people who live on those sun-burnt lands. A temperamental painter and thinker, Ion Țuculescu fully dedicated himself to the fervor of painting, and at the end of the '40s, the beginning of the '50s he began to outline the series of works dedicated to extensive rapeseed fields. In this series, the artist proved his qualities of colorist, resorting to the construction of vegetable images through vibrant colors, avoiding linear treatment. We can observe, in this work, entitled "On the Rapeseed Road", a well-defined contrast of tones, from which we can distinguish a dramatic sentiment specific to a lyrical soul. In the work "On the Rapeseed Road", Țuculescu juxtaposes the crude yellow of the vegetation with the dark blue of the river, which seems to be the boundary separating the two planes of the work. The protagonist of the painting is caught between the desire to remain in a safe, known space and the aspiration to move towards a new stage, represented by the bridge and the course of the river. The artist's non-conformism is also portrayed by the decorative chords in which the shades of black are placed, a color that will play a major role in his mature work. His plastic universe gives the impression of a fairy-tale space marked by paradoxical materializations and artificial luminosity, coupled with a brutal chromatic motif.

References

COMARNESCU, Petre, "Țuculescu"; Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1974.

Dimensions

width 55.5 cm, height 46.5 cm

Description

ulei pe pânză

Research information

The artwork was part of the retrospective exhibition "Ion Țuculescu. The Amateur Genius", Art Safari, 2025, and is reproduced in the exhibition catalogue.

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