44. Diluted Atmosphere

Ţuculescu’s emergence and evolution in Romanian painting are a thing of uniqueness. His art is rather an artistic experience that manages to remain outside any stylistic school or any dominant style. Although repeatedly criticized for his atypical nature, Ţuculescu continues to defy any domestic artistic formula delineated up to the 20th century. According to the critical writings of the time, he is the impersonation of the "Expressionist". And it is precisely this expressionism that will singularize Ţuculescu in the Romanian artistic space. Along his artistic career, Ţuculescu rapidly consumes each stylistic stage, undergoing a continuous change of painting motifs, particularly monitoring the modes of self-expression and the intensity of his emotions. The totemic symbol, which occurs suddenly at the end of the folkloric stage, seems to herald a new change of Ţuculescu’s stylistic journey, which is to be fully defined in 1960. His works become abstract, the horizon fades, the idea of perspective is overturned, being replaced by a blatant bidimensionality, with strong colour compositions. This totemic period, also named the period of "signs and symbols" is characterized by the way in which Ţuculescu’s painting transcends and manages to propose a new system of symbols, which will transform the image into the pure expression of the creative ego. "Atmosferă diluată" ("Diluted Atmosphere") manages to incorporate all the defining elements of Ţuculescu’s abstract period (1959-1960), from the strong, pure colour scheme, to the emblematic symbols - the crucifix, the eye, and the totem. The bidimensionality of the work is rendered by the vertical placement of the figurative elements. The three elements are themselves subject to an amalgamation process, whose result we can identify with the totalizing and dominant image of the totem - an invention of the artist recapturing influences originating in the folklore. Through the representation of a totemic couple, Ţuculescu emphasizes the magical function of the work, its repetitive and hypnotic motifs being transposed like a visual ritual. This ritual manages to direct the aspiration of the creative gesture from the aesthetic to pure, essential reality. Thus, the entire world of the image and the obsession of the creative gesture are recaptured in the being of the totem, a symbol of the totality of the world. Totems operate as a totalizing metaphor, as a symbol of the world of the image and of the creative gesture, which "manage to synthesize and duplicate the uniform and complex pulse of the real."

References

VLASIU, Ion, „Ion Țuculescu”, Ed. Meridiane, Bucharest, 1966. COMARNESCU, Petru, „Țuculescu”, Ed. Meridiane, București, 1974. CÂRNECI, Magda, „Ion Țuculescu”, Ed. Meridiane, Sibiu, 1984.

Dimensions

width 80 cm, height 100 cm, custom 100 × 80 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed bottom right, with black, in monogram, "TUC"

Research information

Maria Țuculescu Collection; Ioana Țuculescu Collection; later, private collection, Bucharest

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