158. At a Glass

Approaching themes and subjects with a profound humanistic charge, Rudolf Schweitzer-Cumpăna is inscribed in the history of Romanian visual arts as a true painter of the village and the native peasant. His childhood spent in the midst of nature, in the rustic atmosphere of Cumpăna, will translate into a diligent study of the life of Argeș county villagers. The artist will transcribe faces, costumes, gestures, and customs into a series of frescoes dedicated to the rural space. Among his heartfelt themes are maternity, work, and the care for the household or domestic chores, transcribed in landscapes, portraits, or genre scenes. He does not idealize the image of the peasant, but presents the simple, ordinary man, with his soulful struggles and daily preoccupations. The dramatism of the artist's chromatic expressiveness is accentuated by his realistic vision. The solemnity of the gestures and the earthy nuances follow in works like "Peasants at the table", "Peasant Lunch" or even in the case of the present work. The artist possesses a remarkable sensitivity and a remarkable power to comprehend human psychology and thus gathers, once again, several characters around a table. We have a direct perspective on the faces of the two men, one portrayed frontally, and the other in profile. The dark tones used for the background create a direct contrast with the characters’ white-accented garment. Keeping the tradition of his preferred thematic cycle, the artist invites us, once again, to penetrate the mysteries of the traditional world.

References

BARBOSA, Octavian, "Dictionary of Contemporary Romanian Artists", Meridian Publishing House, Bucharest, 1976. IONESCU, Radu, "Rudolf Schweitzwer-Cumpăna", Rudolf Schweitzer-Cumpăna Foundation, Bucharest, 2003.

Dimensions

width 52 cm, height 43 cm

Description

oil on cardboard, signed upper left, in red, "Schweitzer-Cumpăna"

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