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108. Prisoners' Room

1886, Bârlad - 1940, Bucureşti

Procjena

EUR 60.000 - 100.000

Sesija

Uto., 19 lipnja 2018 19:00

A distinct personality in both painting, graphics, as well as journalistic writing in particular, Nicolae Tonitza expressed a clean and personal message in his creations and his legacy for the generations to come. Whether with the paint brush or the dip pen, he knew how to weave realities, hierarchize values and encourage talents to give tribute to distinguished artists. He was born on 13 April 1886, in Bârlad, and according to the artist’s own remarks, his vocation appears to have been revealed since childhood, during theatre plays where he would fill the roles of scenographer. His artistic skills were brought into the light later, in 1902, upon his graduation from the 4th grade of middle school, when he finished with top marks in drawing class. These skills led him onwards to the Iași Academy of Fine Arts, where, among those selected in Professor Gheorghe Popovici’s class were also future artists Ștefan Dimitrescu, Grigore Negoșanu, Dimitrie Pavlu, with whom he collaborated ever since the beginning of his artistic road. According to his own accounts, the fascinating moment during the academy years occurred when he began to study living nature, when he began to feel the thrills of artistic creation, leading to an appraisal of his results by his teachers who granted him a bronze medal in 1905 for a "portrait depicted from nature." His first projects include painting churches in the style of Tattarescu, a style encouraged at the time, projects that he usually carried out during summer holidays alongside his colleagues or his professor, Gheorghe Popovici. In 1906 he helped the latter decorate the metropolitan chapel of Iași. His nationalist spirit and the events he was part of led him to Germany in 1908, a decision made as a sign of protest for the expulsion of two of his colleagues. Arriving in Munich, he enrolled in the Königliche Bayerische Akademie der Bildende Künste, in Professor Hugo von Habermann’s class, with whom he developed an excellent relationship due to the fact that both were fascinated by masterpieces of the past, a course that would become "the ultimate teaching" for Tonitza. During this time, he organised an exhibition at the Kunstverein and marked his journalistic debut with his first article, "The Importance of Art Criticism", for the Arta Română magazine in Iași, where he highlighted the need of artistic education through art criticism. Another magazine with which he began collaborating at the time was Furnica, where he would send drawings and caricatures on Romanian social topics. Germany was followed by Italy, where he would experiment with plein-air landscape painting, followed by France where he would work in the shops of artists Edmond Aman-Jean and Pierre Laprade, a period when he would create landscapes, portraits and compositions included in an exhibition of 40 works of art in his studio in Montparnasse, in 1910. He returned to his country in the following year, completed his studies and obtained the church painter certificate, also resuming his exhibition artist, caricaturist and church painter activities alongside his old friends Constantin Bacalu and Ștefan Dimitrescu. His return to the country opened up new career paths, such as the one as a drawing teacher at the Military High School in Iași in 1914, or as a news room secretary for the Iașul magazine in 1915. In August of the following year he was conscripted and sent to the front lines where he was taken prisoner at the battle of Turtucaia (early September 1916), followed by his incarceration at the Kardzhali camp in Bulgaria for nearly two years, a period when he would be afflicted by malaria and rheumatism. This period marked a significant change in his style and thematic shown in the post-war era, his work thus bearing the hallmark of the two years of imprisonment. In all these works influenced by his incarceration, one may notice a depiction of his own experiences or of those of his friends, writer Gheorghe Banea or painter Constantin Vlădescu. He even created a humour magazine with the later during their imprisonment, in five issues - "Nu te lăsa", "Nici mort", "Ține-o aici", "Sărbătorile", "Nu te lăsa", leaving behind only a few expressive graphic pages. Approximately one year later, following international agreements, he was allowed to resume his profession in an improvised studio, where he would create peaceful propaganda drawings, illustrations and texts, and although such were never allowed past the prison gates, he would transcribe them later, at different proportions, after his release in April 1918. His first exhibitions after this period feature the theme of war experienced by the artist himself and transposed into works such as "After the Fall of Turtucaia", "Prisoner Convoy", "Prisoners’ Yard", "Burial of a Romanian Soldier in Bulgaria" or "Soldier’s Mother", genuine pages of a diary, but also maybe one of the most coherent works illustrating the horrors of war. Moreover, the obvious assimilation of an expressionist discourse imbues these works with a privileged status, being among the few fine arts approaches of such a scale in Romanian art. "Prisoners’ Room" is another pictorial inner testimony, created in the oil on cardboard technique, between 1919 and 1920, where the artist expressed the anguish impoverished by the heavy years of war and the misery of his two friends, depicted in the corner of a grey room. The simplicity of the colour palette renders the scene’s dull and diffuse pace, obviously integrating this work in the broad war theme, but more specifically in the imprisonment theme which would linger in the artist’s work for another few years, until 1925 (G.M.)

Literatura

Tonitza, Raoul Șorban, Ed. Meridiane, 1973
Catalog Expoziția N.N. Tonitza, Muzeul de artă al R.P.R., București, ianuarie- martie 1964
N. N. Tonitza, Barbu Brezoianu, Ed. Meridiane, 1986

Dimenzije

width 68.5 cm, height 78 cm

Opis

oil on cardboard, signed upper left, in black, "Tonitza"

Informacije o istraživanju

Opera a fost pictată în perioada imediat următoare Primului Război Mondial, între 1919 și 1920, având punct de pornire experiența propriu-zisă din lagărul de la Kârdjali, cât și unele desene-studii pe care Tonitza le-a realizat în anii 1916-1918. Putem considera studiu preliminat desenul "Soldați în lagărul bulgăresc de la Kîrdjali", 1916, din colecția Muzeului Național de Artă al României, Cabinetul de Stampe și Gravuri, inv. 27853/3255.

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