85. Street from Huși [mid 20s]

Adam Balțatu's artistic debut will take place right in the middle of his parents' home, among his father's sketchbooks. The little artist will delight in drawing after nature and will reproduce in the pages of the notebook horses, carts or other creatures that roamed the alley of his childhood. He will then begin to appropriate trees as his favourite pictorial motif and will illustrate them under various light effects determined by the time of day he is working. After several study trips to Italy, Adam Balțatu returned in 1921 to Huși, where he would settle for a long period as a drawing teacher. He will have the opportunity, from this moment on, to undertake numerous plastic exercises and will transcribe, above all, the beauty and nostalgia of the Romanian landscape. Streets of Huși, with oxen or horse-drawn carts, hills and houses, fairs, birch trees or alleys bathed in the afternoon light will become recurring subjects in the artist's work from the 1920s onwards. The present work enjoyed notoriety at the time and saw the light of print not once, but twice, being reproduced both in one of the editions of 'Universului Literar' (Literary Universe) in 1927 and in one of the issues of the 'Arta și Tehnica Grafică' (Art and Graphic Technique) magazine in 1938. Nature twisted through the trunks and branches of the trees, but also the patches of colour in the protagonist's clothes or the walls of the houses, the green of nature and the grey-blue of the sky reveal the painter as a colourist. The drawing is intertwined with chromatic force and anticipates the virtuosity that the painter will show throughout his career. Still in its infancy, the present work remains a milestone in the representation of Adam Balțatu's native Huși and at the same time a proof of mastery in rendering the picturesque landscape on canvas.

References

TEODORESCU, D.N., 'Adam Bălțatu', Print 'Mercur', Clichés 'E. Mârvan', Bucharest, 1924.

Dimensions

width 59.5 cm, height 49.5 cm, custom 49,5 × 59,5 cm

Description

oil on cardboard, signed bottom right, in red, 'Bălțatu'

Research information

The work is reproduced in the 'Arta și Tehnica Grafică' (Art and Graphic Technique) magazine, Bulletin of the State Printers, special issue, No 4-5, June-September 1938, p. 142. The work is reproduced in the 'Universul Literar' (The Literary Universe) magazine of 6 February 1927.

Dating

mid 20s

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