67. Self-portrait [sfârșitul anilor '50]

Often captured in photographs or self-portraits with a lit cigarette, "the poet of imagination", as critics called Constantin Piliuță, was a rebellious artist, especially in the period before 1989. One of the constants in Piliuță's work was portrait painting. In addition to portraits of important figures in Romanian culture (Tudor Arghezi, Val Mugur, Constantin Stroescu), Piliuță also focused on his own representation over time. Portraiture provided him the necessary precepts to reveal his deep psychological intuition. He managed to reveal his personal optics by outlining distinct grimaces or a body language deciphered from the gestures of his model. In instances where the model looked back at him from the mirror, the artist used his self-representation on canvas to initiate a socio-political manifesto. He evoked his daily habits through the use of symbols (the cigarette, the glass – which we also find in the artist's signature). He relied on theatricality and the embedding of meanings and transformed the self-portrait series into an "age diary". The energy of young Piliuță was transposed into colors inspired from Fauvism, however, this approach to color was much diminished over time. The transpositions of his own figure on canvas evolved from the stage of youth filled with vivid colors and pronounced brushwork, to a prolonged calculation of color and its careful application to the canvas.

References

"Constantin Piliuta. Zenith Color", University of Bucharest Publishing House, Bucharest, 2001. "C. Piliuta", Alexandru Cebuc, ARC 2000, Bucharest, 2002.

Dimensions

width 24 cm, height 29 cm

Description

oil on cardboard, signed upper right, in black, in monogram, "P."

Dating

sfârșitul anilor '50

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