24. Apple Orchard [1977]

About Horia Bernea's painting, we can say that it is under the sign of an apparent traditionalism. A consideration that we can classify as unfounded because Bernea's universe is shaped around a history of craftmanship. Art, for Bernea the painter, must provoke itself, to surpass its own limits and constraints. Bernea's preference in art is for the rediscovery of long forgotten spaces, the search for innocence in things that have lost their purist allure. The realness of Bernea's compositions is always changing, seeking to convey new meanings as truthfully as possible. Thus, the subject of his works is a continuous search, in which both the artist and the viewer turn back to rediscover the world they once abandoned. Horia Bernea has always chosen a subject that would become the central point of his great pictorial series. Behind these big thematic cycles "Hill", "Gardens", "Prapor", there have been a multitude of sketches and drawings that have become compositionally viable for the artist. In Bernea's works, there is a first encounter in an outer, suprapersonal dimension with the motive of the painting and the calling to paint it. Thus, Horia Bernea's name is deeply tied to the "Poiana Mărului School", dedicating an entire series of works to the world there. The artist's history overlaps with the village’s, and the years spent in childhood will convince him to return to this same place in maturity. His encounter with the natural space of Poiana Mărului will convince the artist to dedicate a multitude of works to this theme. In the '60s and '70s, Horia Bernea will create the "Gardens" series, inspired by the world of the Poiana Mărului village and its vivid vegetation. The present work "Poiana Mărului" is part of a series dedicated to an untouched world, suspended in time, along with works such as "Hill at Poiana Mărului", "Landscape at Poiana Mărului". Poiana Mărului remained a strong presence in the late creation of most artists who frequented it, either through stylistic and thematic approaches inspired by it. When we discuss this school, we do not consider a certain stylistic direction, but rather a return to a common space, untouched by ideology. "Besides sentimental motives, there are a series of springs that are set in motion every time I work at Poiana. The given plot in this case is nature", Horia Bernea would say about his artistic inspiration.

References

"Horia Bernea", National Museum of Art of Romania. Department of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, 1997 Monograph "Horia Bernea", Noi media print Publishing, 2008.

Dimensions

width 41 cm, height 42 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed and dated bottom right, in red, "HB, 6.1977"

Dating

1977

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