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OPRESCU George "Jean Alexandru Steriadi draftsman" compilation album created by and with a foreword by Acad. G. OPRESCU, Publishing House of the People's Republic of Romania Academy, Bucharest, 1961
oil on canvas glued on cardboard, 38 x 45 cm, signed bottom right, in black, "Steriadi"
Jean Alexandru Steriadi is considered one of the most prominent figures in Romanian painting, a follower of the painters Grigorescu and Luchian, he manages to combine transformations and peculiarities of everyday life and reflect them in his work.
He enrolled at the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest, where he worked under the guidance of professor G.D. Mirea, in the painting class, and then studied for four years in Munich, where he learned theoretical notions and technical peculiarities for realism. Meanwhile, during his studies in Paris, he gained insights necessary for applying lighting plans and for enhance the color palette. After returning from his studies in 1907, he began to participate in the artistic life, organizing his first personal exhibition, followed in 1910 by a second one in the halls of the Athenaeum in Bucharest, exhibitions which had a retrospective character.
In landscapes, due to his studies in Paris, he manages to capture the light and enhance the chromatic palette in a special way, landscapes that delight through their diverse and vivid colors, but also through bold strokes. When making a landscape, Steriadi focuses on observing and visualizing details, to integrate them naturally into these. His sure and firm hand give certainty, shape and contour to the works.
Landscapes are made at once, without returns and adjustments to the content, with summary traits paying special attention to the distribution of shadows and lights. After defining the large lines of the composition, he returns with spots of shadow, sometimes made with his finger, to evoke and capture better the light playing on the surface of the details in nature, where some examples in this regard are: "Landscape from Verre (Holland)", "Landscape from old Bucharest" or "Marine (Balcic)".
Regarding this artwork, which can be framed in the period after his return from studies, in the first half of the twentieth century when the artist began to produce such works, where the focus is on the representation of the city and daily life, and here, in this work, one can observe the same idea of highlighting and emphasizing this theme, of a house with a garden and courtyard in the center of Bucharest. The work depicts a broad perspective of a house with a rich garden and courtyard in the center of Bucharest.
The landscape is a natural, usual one of spring, with green trees, the sky is rendered vibrantly, in short strokes of light blue and white. The brushwork is warm, with varied and rapid strokes. The composition is balanced in terms of color, where in this work one can observe various tones of blue, hues of green, accents of pink, white and red.
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