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oil on cardboard, 61 x 49 cm, signed bottom left, in black, "Șirato"
Research information
The artwork was featured in the "Group of Four" exhibition, Romanian Book, Ileana Room, 7 - 21 March 1926, Bucharest and is mentioned in the exhibition catalog at cat. 5, under the title "The Cobzar".
Portraits of Romanian or Turkish peasants, as well as the faces of some unusual characters that appear in the mid-1920s represented a turning point in Șirato's art, not only because of the exceptional quality of the works, but more because of this redirection of the subject, seeking to align with the Romanian specificity, unanimously preached at the time. The style that will characterize Șirato's art for a few years in the third decade, eminently influenced by the national specificity, will be rooted in the public opinion with the appearance of the composition "The meeting" in 1924, a moment when the artist's reputation will be an established fact. What directly interests us is the innovation of the structural particularities of the work, which becomes a constant in the art of the years to follow. The monumental vision, the chosen subject and the pictorial manner are defining of works with a strong universalist character, meant to offer a coherent picture of Romanian peasant life. This work will be followed by others, like "The bark merchant", "Return from market" or "Carpet seller", works that go beyond the simple folklore framework and manage to touch, under the spectrum of a cultured art, the popular spirituality. These success appeared at the moment when Șirato began ethnographic interrogations, aiming at integrating the traditional element into the economy of the composition, whether it is represented by peasants, props of popular creation or images of an accentuated picturesque rural effect, as is the case with this work. "Cobzarul" (The Bard) by Șirato introduces us to the cycle dedicated by the artist to the simple man, diligently researched since the First World War, a fact reflected especially through the watercolors from the "Refugees" series. Along with other works made in the mid-1920s - "Village chiabur", "Gypsies from Oatu gorpile" or "Gypsy" - participants at the exhibition of the Group of the Four in 1926, "Cobzarul" (The Bard) consecrates this cycle dedicated to "the marginal", to the neighborhood carrier of a cultural flow analyzed by the theorist Șirato. In the compositional plan, besides mentioning typology, the painter builds volumes, in a parafigurative relationship. The architectural background used to bind in transmitting a monumental instance is loaded with structural elements recognizable also in a Tonitza or Theodorescu-Sion creation; thus, the verticality of the two trees placed in different perspectives gives the work a quasi-constructivist aspect.
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