1. Call to Prayer [ca. 1926]

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1. Call to Prayer [ca. 1926]

Corneliu Michăilescu

1887, Bucureşti - 1965, Bucureşti

Estimate:

EUR 6.000 - 9.000

Sold

EUR 7.500

oil on cardboard, 82 x 66 cm, 66x82

Research information

Opera face parte dintr-un ciclu dedicat de Corneliu Michăilescu subiectelor religioase sau din universul creștin, alături de alte compoziții realizate la mijlocul anilor 1920 ca "Angelus", "Bunavestire", "Călugărițe" sau peisajele ce surprind biserici și mânăstiri.

The original route followed by Corneliu Michăilescu presents one of the most conscientious painters who have shown themselves on the Romanian artistic stage during the interwar period. Driven by other ideals than his colleagues, after finishing the courses of the Bucharest School of Fine Arts (1912), Michăilescu did not take the road to the great artistic capitals (Munich, Paris), but instead he left for Florence, attracted by Renaissance masters. This first period of creation, an eclectic stage in which the artist experienced outdoor painting, Expressionism, but especially Fauvism, was defined by the two stages of training in Italy, completed in 1921 when he returned to the country. Ever since his first exhibition in the country, in April 1922, Michăilescu strayed from the well-known typologies of academic movements, announcing the Cubist and later Surrealist manifestations. The attraction towards Cubism was to be profoundly manifested in Michăilescu's creation in the mid-20s, when it was beginning to be remarked in the Romanian cultural environment. At the 1924 Official Salon he received the first medal for the "Castle Guardians", and then approached the Avant-garde groups around M.H.Maxy and Marcel Iancu. Around 1926, he dedicated an important series to compositions of the religious universe, either in symbolic works ("Annunciation", "Angelus") or in landscapes, as is the case here. The attenuation of Cubism, the use of the fauve palette and the compositional structure with a surrealist tinge are the main defining elements of this work and of the period, which leads to a rather expressionist creation, further individualising him in the Romanian interwar art.

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