57. Cula from Olt [1915-1918]

The landscape was one of the favorite genres of Petrașcu, especially because the motifs that can be extracted from nature responded to his need to apply his favorite plastic background. It was precisely through this malleability of the visualised work, merged with a vocation of inorganic matter, that Petrașcu's painting manifested attraction towards the mineralising aspect, often searching for subjects prone to this premise. From the beginning of his career until 1900, Petraşcu chose "outdated" motifs: medieval corners, old cities, constructions built in stone and brick, suitable for interpretations dictated by the thickened, closed and cumbersome palette. The picturesque feel of his views was thus transposed on the ways he built images directly into the paste, and the series of urban landscapes represented the first target of this style. The old Romanian towns Curtea de Argeș, Târgovişte, Sighişoara or Sibiu opened an interesting dialogue between Petrașcu and landscape painting, a dialogue defined by the transposition on canvas of a certain atmosphere, so unique in the Romanian painting of the first half of the 20th century. The novelty of this canvas consists of the building painted in the foreground. A typical Oltenian cula, which could only be painted in Oltenia, appears for the first time in Petrașcu's imagination. Besides, the areas in which he may have found such a building were not included in Petrașcu's itineraries: in Muntenia the westernmost place he reached was Câmpulung, but this work can provide a new artistic itinerary. Another explanation for the emergence of a cula (probably from Gorj) can be the appearance in Bucharest, at the General Exhibition in 1906, of a replica of a cula from Olt in Carol Park. In the same park, between 1914 and 1916, Petrașcu, as the custodian of the State Pinacotheca (headquartered in the Palace of the Arts in Carol Park), saw the Cula from Old every day, a cula with the same specificity as the painting of the artist - the belfry. The more plausible explanation is this second version, in the absence of an accurate identification of a route through Oltenia in Petrașcu’s career spanning 40 years.

References

FLOREA, Vasile, "Gheorghe Petraşcu", Ed. Meridiane, Bucureşti, 1989
"Gh. Petraşcu", Catalogul expoziţiei de pictură, Muzeul de Artă al Republicii Socialiste România, Bucureşti, 1972

Dimensions

width 35 cm, height 42 cm, custom 35x42

Description

oil on canvas, signed lower right, in blue, "G. Petraşcu"

Research information

Opera a participat în expoziția "Casa în pictura românească din colecțiile particulare", Muzeul Municipiului București, în perioada 4-21 iunie 2013 şi este reprodusă în catalogul expoziţiei la pag. 70
Opera a participat în expoziția "Iarna în pictura românească din colecţii particulare", Muzeul Municipiului București, în perioada 5 octombrie-3 noiembrie 2010 şi este reprodusă în catalogul expoziţiei la pag. 37.

Dating

1915-1918

PROVENANCE

historic collection of the writer and journalist Eugen Barbu (1924-1993).

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

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