77. Still Life with Fruits [a doua jumătate a anilor '20]

With an extensive artistic activity, both in Romania and in France and Italy, Nicolae Dărăscu asserts himself as a synthesis artist, combining influences from Impressionism, post-Impressionism and even Neo-Impressionism in his work. The year 1906 finds him in France, where he comes into direct contact with the new specific plastic tendencies of the time. It seems that during this period he would have met Paul Signac, while also showing profound curiosity for Chervreul and Helmonholz's discoveries about the laws of optics. After a series of experiments in pointillist key, Dărăscu continues to combine the dot with the broad, free brushstroke, specific to classical impressionism. In this way, he outlines his own visual language, in which the rigor of construction intertwines with chromatic expressiveness. The current work, a genre less frequently in his creation, clearly reflects the influences of the French period. Here are rather echoes of what the critic Marian Constantin called "romantic impressionism", visible especially through the relationship with the work of Paul Cézanne, a fundamental artist for his evolution. Like Cézanne, Dărăscu aims for a solid construction of forms, without strictly delimiting them by firm contours. The brushstrokes are divided, the colors are intensely saturated and juxtaposed in hot-cold agreements, creating a balanced composition, but not flat - a pictorial space with depth, but without forced illusionism. The vibrant and bright background reminds of what Barbu Brezianu and Francisc Șirato called "coloristic kaleidoscope" - a formulation that captures the way Dărăscu composes the shades, generating infinite variations depending on the viewer's gaze and state. His palette is not just harmonious, but also alive, in a constant movement. For Dărăscu, art always starts from careful observation of nature. As Ernst Gombrich also stated, "art can get what the exact sciences or logic forbid" - and the painting of Nicolae Dărăscu perfectly illustrates this creative freedom.

References

The Exhibition Catalog "Nicolae Dărăscu - Magician of color", National Museum Cotroceni, Bucharest, 2009. CRUCERU, Florica, POSTOLACHE, Luminita-Dana, DARIDA, Ioan , ”Dictionary of artists from the Romanian space 1700-1920”, ed. ACS 2021, Bucharest 2019. GOMBRICH, Ernst Hans, ”The Story of Art”, ed. Art, Bucharest, 2021.

Dimensions

width 54 cm, height 45 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed upper left, in red, "D."

Dating

a doua jumătate a anilor '20

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