96. View of the Mediterranean [1933-1935]

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96. View of the Mediterranean [1933-1935]

Nicolae Tonitza

1886, Bârlad - 1940, Bucureşti

Estimate:

EUR 10.000 - 16.000

Sold

EUR 35.000

References

Florica Cruceru, Doina Păuleanu, Simona Urziceanu, "Opera lui Nicolae Tonitza în patrimoniul Muzeelor de Artă din Constanța și Topalu" ("Nicolae Tonitza's works in the patrimony of the Art Museums of Constanța and Topalu"), Bucharest, 1979.

oil on cardboard, 50 x 40 cm, 50 Ã 40 cm, signed bottom left, in black, "Tonitza"

The moment of Balchik's discovery coincided, in Nicolae Tonitza's creation, with the moment abandonment of the academic school, which considerably limited his linear perspective. The summer of 1933 captured the Romanian artist wandering the maritime lands which considerably enlarged his pictorial horizon. The summers spent in Balchik filled Tonitza's canvases with coffee shops, traditional houses, flower shops, windows, verandas, slums, or the charming bay of the Dobrogea area. An analytical spirit, the artist identified new solutions in the illustration of spatial depth and chose to divide the canvas into so-called "screens". Rocks, sky and sea will follow one another in an extraordinary alternation, revealing close-ups and distances true to reality. Tonitza captured the sea in an immobile, dense, and opaque posture. The mirage of the oriental world will give a special rhythm to the creations made in Balchik, and the sinuous arabesques of the lines will appear more and more often in the specific work of this period. The artist captures the atmosphere and the local colour by a considerable reduction of the palette to just a few shades spread over much larger areas. He delineates shapes by colour from the palette with the same skill he demonstrates in drawing. The large areas, realised in oil, enjoys the diaphanous light of the bay, which the artist applies in repeated layers of white. In this work, Tonitza creates a veritable panorama of the space on the Black Sea shore. He admirably introduces black accents, which contributes to highlighting the materiality of the nature represented. The contrasts are reduced to minimum, the human characters are inexistent, and what prevails in his work attributed to this period is the most faithful representation of reality. Thus, the artist passed the seascape through his own filter and transposed it onto canvas with the skill of the drawer and the careful use of the painter's brush. (D.C.)

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