71. The Riddle [1914]

Băncilă often focuses his attention in his works on the daily life of people, the working class, peasants, or minorities, studying their ways and customs extensively, thus managing to pictorially depict their entire psychology. The artist captures the carts that roam through the distance or the tents pitched on the grass, directly in the midst of nature, using an effervescent color palette. His creation is abundant in paintings inspired by nomadic life, where the typologies Băncilă approaches are centered on the female character, who most often embodies the witch, the reader or the fortune teller, as is the present work, which we can place from the period of 1914. Băncilă captures the atmosphere of a mysterious meeting, a modest interior, where we can observe a fortune teller alongside some playing cards laid on a table. The scene is rendered in a warm light with firm brush strokes, highlighting the face and gestures of the hands. The face of the fortune teller presents us an elderly woman, emanating a mysterious authority. Through his composition, the painter evokes both the fascination with the real world and popular beliefs as well as his social sensitivity. From the style he employs in his work, we can notice that this subject will often be revisited in the following years due to his passion for creating these scenes.

References

COMAN, Anton, "Octav Băncilă", State Publishing House for Literature and Art, Bucharest, 1954.

Dimensions

width 57.5 cm, height 57.5 cm

Description

ulei pe pânză, signed and dated top left, in brown, "Octav Băncilă, 1914"

Dating

1914

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