124. Still Life with Spring Flowers [second half of the 30s]

Alexandru Ciucurencu

1903, Ciucurova, Tulcea - 1977, Bucureşti

Estimate

EUR 7.000 - 12.000

Sold post auction

EUR 7.875

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Session

Tue, 19 June 2018 19:00

Ciucurencu studied at the Bucharest School of Fine Arts with G.D. Mirea and Camil Ressu, with the latter leaving a mark on his artistic personality, by the effect of drawing and compositional cultivation. He was also the one to lead him to study in France, with Ciucurencu winning a scholarship by contest. In Paris, he first made contact with the Julian Academy, then worked in the studio of André Lhote (1885-1962), whose influence would mark the artistic evolution of the young painter. Arriving in France in 1931, Ciucurencu discovered the effervescent atmosphere of the capital, housing some of the most diverse forms of artistic manifestation. With a natural calling for colouring, Ciucurencu focused on the movements that highlighted a concern for colour, i.e. Impressionism, Post-impressionism and Fauvism, which, although outdated at the time, could still provide him with relevant knowledge. The first solo exhibition in 1934, at the Mozart Hall, was followed by constant participations at the Official Salon and other individual exhibitions, which let art critics to admit Ciucurencu at the forefront of his generation. The works created during his first period featured his interest for obtaining a refined pictorial effect, by the use of tones in thin and transparent layers, as well as the tendency to invest the colour with the ability to contain the shape. After the 1946-1947 period, painting starts to fall within the coordinates of socialist realism, demonstrating a special concern for monumental composition and for a thematic inspired by the history of the people, industrial landscapes and scenes of labour in factories and on the fields. Ciucurencu uses this period to provide a more determined initiation on the path of the real, his paintings gaining new means of highlighting the truthfulness of the scenes depicted. From Pallady, Ciucurencu took certain still life composition rules, as well as the respect for geometrized order and rigour in the painting composition, designed to curb overflowing impulses. The great Romanian colourists Luchian, Petraşcu, Tonitza especially taught him that painting must not be conceived as a message of the intellectual, but rather as one of artistic emotion felt before the phenomena of life. After going through a constructivist stage, Ciucurencu is unleashed in an explosion of colour and allows himself the freedom of the most bold of combinations, stepping into his phase of ultimate colouring jubilation, discussed by critic Radu Bogdan in 1947, referring to the ratio between colour and object: “we are facing a role reversal: the object belongs to colour, and not the other way around.” In other words, “Ciucurencu’s painting stems from feeling. A mere patch of colour that has impressed the painter’s retina continues to obsess his visual field and becomes the starting point of an entire painting.” “Still Life with Spring Flowers” renders the painter’s concern for imbuing colour with the ability to materially imply shape. The colours used here are the ones constantly used in his still lifes, with a moderate intensity, streaming from his lyrical experience before the motif. Harmonies of brown, light blue and green, in various paste consistencies and opacities, lean towards a decorative congruence, without expunging concordance with reality.

References

GRIGORESCU, Dan, "Ciucurencu", Ed. Meridiane, Bucureşti, 1965
IONESCU, Radu, "Ciucurencu", Ed. Semne, București, 1994
JIANU, Ionel, "A. Ciucurencu", Ed. de stat pentru Literatură și Artă, 1958
OPRESCU, George, "Alexandru Ciucurencu", Ed. Meridiane, București, 1962

Dimensions

width 48 cm, height 61 cm, custom 48x61

Description

oil on cardboard, signed lower right, in monogram, in white, "AC"

Dating

second half of the 30s

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