203. Woman Inside [1910]

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203. Woman Inside [1910]

Gheorghe Petraşcu

1872, Tecuci, Galați - 1949, Bucureşti

Estimate:

EUR 12.000 - 18.000

Sold

EUR 12.000

References

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

oil on canvas, 40.5 x 42 cm, 42x40,5, signed lower right, in white, "G. Petraşcu"

Research information

Opera a participat la Expoziția Tinerimii Artistice, București, aprilie 1910, expusă în Sala VII și este menționată și reprodusă în catalogul expoziției la cat. 176, sub titlul "Nud pe canapea". Opera este reprodusă în "Noua Revistă Română", vol. 8, nr. 2-3, 18-15 aprilie 1910, la pag. 29. Opera este reprodusă în catalogul "Nudul în pictura românească", Mircea Deac, Editura Monitorul Oficial, București, 2010.

For Petraşcu, the nude never represented his way of paying tribute to the female body, but rather a plastic manifestation, at least in some cases in which the nude was not aesthetically defined. Even though he started to paint this subject from the very first years of his career, especially when he allowed himself to become inspired by Symbolist poetry and he drew naked nymphs sitting by the water, the painter did not seek to flatter neither through drawing, nor through colours, in fact he did not seek to flatter even when he painted his own wife in those intimate circumstances. However, even if he did not seek to interpret his models according to the canons of classical beauty, Petraşcu always reached the exception that confirms value. In the most original surfaces, the painter shaped the nakedness, and the colour palette reached effervescent materiality. Attracted by classical European painting, painting works influenced by the classical nudes of Titian or Delacroix, Petraşcu is inspired at the beginning of his career by the great compositions dedicated to the female model. The nude is painted in large areas of colour, but the apparent compositional mass does not hurt the detailed study of shadows, relevantly shown on the model’s body. The colour volumes are absorbed into the composition, and the shape blends efficiently into generous touches of colour. The nudes painted by Petraşcu in 1910 were noted by the reviewer and art critic Theodor Cornel in the pages of "Social Life", May 1910: "His nudes, which outraged the incapable, are absolutely interesting. Those serious studies have a superior artistic quality to the nudes, be they made out of sugar or chocolate, which dishonour the well-decorated walls of the Artistic Youth." "The famous landscape painter Petraşcu addresses this year the difficult problem of the female nude, to which he seeks to give an entirely original and personal solution." (Lazăr Cosma, "The New Romanian Journal", 18, 25 April 1910)."

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