53. Vase with Roses [cca. 1917]

Title holder of a sensitive and prodigious character, but confident in his own forces, Gheorghe Petrașcu will abandon the copyist model promoted by his predecessors and will rely on the spontaneity of his execution. Holder of a special talent, he will be noticed by Nicolae Grigorescu and G.D. Mirea and will come, through the prism of his vocation, to develop professionally during his study trips abroad. He debuted in front of the Bucharest public in 1900, through a personal exhibition. The painting he proposes is much more brutal than his predecessors'. Petrașcu opts for a dark chromatic and for the use of strident contrasts. He evokes aspects of nature through his specific coloration and is not shy to abundantly use black, red and electric green. Petrașcu's floral elegies will gain the status of true pictorial spectacles due to his completely different way of realization compared to Grigorescu, Luchian or Andreescu. He distinguished himself through the power of realistic expressivity and the austere aspect of his works. The succulent paste, carefully laid with the tip of the knife transfigures reality through the complexity and hardness of the material used. The artist proves to be a genuine master of technique and inserts light into color, but he will also learn to master the secrets of black, which he assimilates from Goya's work. Frugally represented, in bright and strong colors, Petrașcu's roses become a visceral record of a fragment of nature set against an inorganic background. His brush has repeatedly followed the contour of the flower pots, the cooking pot or the book. The painter's execution power is revealed in the color reached by the tip of the knife, in the vibrant color of the petals and in the shine of the pot that contains the flowers. The fluid aspect of the forms represented is often crowned by the use of black. The artist gave this shade extraordinary expressiveness, which he adapted almost scenographically, trying to include the atmosphere of his studio in his canvases. The few color spots transposed into the petals of the flowers, placed above the dark background, stand out undoubtedly and enhance the entire composition. The study of plants will therefore emerge from the author's imagination directly onto the canvas.

References

OPRESCU, George, "Gheorghe Petrașcu", Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1963. DRĂGUȚ, Vasile, "Reunion with Petrașcu's painting", in Museum Review, no. 2, 1973, pp. 116-120.

Dimensions

width 53.5 cm, height 39.5 cm

Description

oil on canvas glued on cardboard, signed on the right side, in pink, "G. Petrașcu"

Dating

cca. 1917

PROVENANCE

Zoia Ceaușescu's collection: - Confiscated in December 1989, being taken over by the National Museum of Art of Romania. - Returned to the heirs of the Zoia Ceaușescu family, in the year 2012. Private collection.

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