The photos of the lot are informative and indicative, and cannot provide a highly detailed view of the object from all angles. We recommend a careful physical inspection of the lot before bidding.
ȘUȘARĂ, Pavel, "Corneliu Baba. A Painter from the East? ", Official Monitor, Bucharest, 2013
MUSCALU ALBANI, Maria, "Corneliu Baba", Publishing House of the Romanian Cultural Institute, Bucharest, 2008.
oil on paper glued on cardboard, 63 x 32.5 cm, signed and dated lower right, in black, "Baba, (19)68"; signed, dated and titled on the back, in pen, "Corneliu Baba, Study of harlequin, 1968"
Throughout his life, Corneliu Baba was interested in faces, in people who would stir his creative spirit. "My people, I always intend to be silent, solemn, without being stupefied by misery. I want them to be dignified," the artist would say about the core of his work. Throughout his years of artistic labor, Corneliu Baba perfected his style, managing to capture the amalgam of human experiences within his canvas. He never allowed his people, whether they were anonymous heroes or admirable characters, to pass under his brush as anodyne figures.
He was inspired by Rembrandt and the great Dutch school portrait painters, thus encompassing a myriad of directions added to a journey with expressionistic and symbolistic valences that critics would compare directly to Francisco Goya.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the artist said in his diary: "Everything is still far from what I want. I get the impression that I'm struggling in a prison, a prison of my own limitations, which I am trying to overcome with a little terribly hard effort," feeling like he was in a period of personal stagnation, burdened by insomnia and the endless work in the studio, all of these push the artist towards a "spiritual incarceration". Corneliu Baba enters an artistic stage of analysis, through which he intends to synthesize human psychological depth. This period captures the painter's anxieties, the uncertainty he faces, but also the ambition to give the canvas a structure full of voluptuousness and expressiveness.
The work at hand is part of this visceral cycle of meditation. Thus, the "anonymous friend," as Corneliu Baba named him, the harlequin, appears. Full of melancholy, sadness, the Harlequin represents a human type of sad comedy. The Harlequin Suite is derived from the portraiture mentioned earlier and captures the ambiguity of being, the intertwining of the game, under a rigid mask, with the dramatic. Through the harlequins, Corneliu Baba oscillates from the individual to the general, capturing the transition from face to mask.
From a plastic point of view, the harlequin is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Corneliu Baba. The artist has several works that have the harlequin as the central point: "Harlequin with Monkey", "Harlequin with Guitar", "Harlequin". The artist uses a chromatic approach specific to the 1970s and 1980s. The painter has worked with a limited palette, but with which he managed to accentuate expressiveness through the chosen colors: black, brown, ocher, adding depth to the character's alienation. Baba is an academic painter with a preference for chiaroscuro. The play of lights, colors, and shadows impresses the viewer, but the irregular shifts in texture complete the artist's characteristic ensemble.
Thus, the work represents a synthesis of the 70s and 80s, a period when Corneliu Baba, obsessed with portraits, explores the human split through his characters. The artist brings to the fore his endless searches about the human condition, in the tradition of great masters.
(C.M.)
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