Alexandre Istrati - Lyrical abstraction

Alexandre Istrati (1915 in Dorohoi, Romania – 1991 in Paris, France) was a Franco-Romanian painter. He won numerous prizes, including 1953 the Prix Kandinsky.
He married fellow Romanian abstract expressionist painter, Natalia Dumitresco.
"Istrati was an internationally acclaimed exponent of the Abstraction Lyrique movement which was the European equivalent to Abstract Expressionism in America, and included Soulages, Schneider, Germain and Lanskoy amongst others. This magnificent example painted at the height of the movement wonderfully demonstrates his powerful style of sensuously nurtured surfaces and supremacy of colour. This was the apogee of the Modernist era which advocated a purely self-referential autonomy of art and in this work we experience the raw physicality of the paint so dramatically that we no longer read the painting as a two dimensional representation, but as a vibrant and highly energised sculptural object.
Having attended the Academy of Art in Bucharest Istrati arrived in Paris in 1947, where he and his wife, the painter Natalia Dumitresco, were befriended by their compatriot Constantin Brancusi who gave them a studio next to his and helped introduce them to the thriving Paris art scene. Istrati’s uncompromising avant-garde spirit soon became renowned and when he exhibited his first abstract paintings at the Salon des Superindépendants  in 1948 the critics applauded his radical new style. The following year in 1949 he held his first one-man show at Galerie Breteau which was so successful the leading art dealers Collete Allendy and Dénise René both invited Istrati to exhibit at their eponymous galleries. In the circle of these highly influential gallerists Istrati found himself at the forefront of the post-war avant-garde along with artists such as Soulages, Deyrolle, Magnelli and Poliakoff with whom he became particularly close. In 1953 he was awarded the prestigious Prix Kandinsky and was appointed to the committee of the Salon d’Octobre and in the next few years he would also serve on the committees of the Salon Comparaison and the groundbreaking Salon des Réaltités Nouvelles."(haninafinearts.com)

European abstract paintings Romul Nuțiu

Romul Nuțiu (July 28, 1932 – April 5, 2012) was one of the most constant artists dedicated to Abstraction from the Romanian art scene.
His career evolved from the early sixties, when he was a young artist, eager to experience new ways of relating to painting and continued fluently until his death in 2012. Even though there are variations of style and appraisal, his painting had always been vivid, colourful and tenacious.
'The artistic biography of Romul Nuțiu lays under the sign of a happy exception', said art historian Ruxandra Demetrescu. 'In the 7th decade of the last century he was one of the first Romanian artists that had professed the Abstract Expressionism and/or European Informal. He remained faithful to abstraction in general and then he converted painting into object. The innovative character corresponds naturally in his case with that of an avantgardist (even in the literal sense of the word).' 'In the 70s, in Timisoara, a few artists acknowledge and try to change the moral hazard of political strategies. For Nuțiu, the personal input is abstract. The relationship history/present, the studio poetics, the new approach of the artistic medium, image as material are syntagms for what painting and object painting represent. In order to understand the concept in regard to the 70s slang, one must admit the decisive personal approach of painting
The relation to Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel is best described by the artist: 'In 1957, when I graduated, my belief was strictly connected to the idea that the perception of things is rather important for the creation act, but being limited, one has to appeal to the subconscious through experiment, challenge and transcendence. My informal was born from hard work and devotion. At that moment, I knew few things about contemporary art, and what I learned in school was just some academic knowledge that was only partially useful. Later on, when I started to travel, I came in contact with the European informal. In the big museums I found out that my way was somehow synchronized, having a polarity to what I was seeing. Abstract expressionism and the European informal made me understand that I have to keep my own authenticity and sensitivity.Wikipedia

Jacques Herold

"Jacques Hérold, painter, printmaker, illustrator, and sculptor, was born Herold Blumer in the town of Moldavia, Romania on October 10, 1910. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest between 1925 and 1929. Not wanting to become an academic painter, Hérold abandoned his formal education and became an architectural draftsman. During this time, he discovered the avant-garde artists' publication 75HP, which inspired him to travel to Paris in 1930.
Upon his arrival in Paris he changed his name to Jacques Hérold. He worked for Constantin Brancusi and met Victor Braun, Yves Tanguy and André Breton and, in 1934, he officially joined Breton's Surrealist group. Hérold exhibited at the Salon d’Automne beginning in 1936, and, in the late 1940s, his work was included in all the major Surrealism exhibitions. His first solo exhibition was mounted in 1947. In the 1950s, Hérold studied under Stanley William Hayter at his experimental workshop Atelier 17 alongside Europe’s leading experimental printmakers.
Hérold was also an illustrator and he designed covers and illustrations for more than eighty books by renowned authors. His work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington; Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique; the Musuem of Modern Art, Liege; the Musée Cantini, Marseilles; Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderne e Contemporanea, Rome; National Museum of Modern Art, Centre George Pompidou; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
Jacques Hérold remained an active artist until his death in Paris on January 11, 1987. In 2010, the Musée Cantini in Marseilles mounted an exhibition, Jacques Hérold et le Surréalism."(annexgalleries.com)

Abstract art Romul Nuțiu

Romul Nuțiu (July 28, 1932 – April 5, 2012)was one of the most constant artists dedicated to Abstraction from the Romanian art scene. Even though he had not left the country to work abroad along his life, his international career has tremendously risen since 2008, when he started a fruitful collaboration with Dr. Joana Grevers, art dealer and historian based in Munich, Germany.
Son of a forester and a housewife from Bilbor, Harghita, Nuțiu attended the primary school from Cașva village, Mures county in 1938. In 1940, following the Dictate from Wien, he takes refuge in Blaj and settles in Reghin, in 1941, where he graduated the Pedagogical High School 'Petru Maior' in the end of the 40s.
From 1951 to 1957, he studied at the Fine Arts Institute 'Ion Andreescu' in Cluj, with the professors Petru Feier and Teodor Harsia. Leon Vreme, Paul Sima, Mircea Balau, Vasile Pop Szilagy, Alexandru Cristea, Edwin Solomon and Sofia Kryzanowska were among his colleagues.

The relation to Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel is best described by the artist: 'In 1957, when I graduated, my belief was strictly connected to the idea that the perception of things is rather important for the creation act, but being limited, one has to appeal to the subconscious through experiment, challenge and transcendence. My informal was born from hard work and devotion. At that moment, I knew few things about contemporary art, and what I learned in school was just some academic knowledge that was only partially useful. Later on, when I started to travel, I came in contact with the European informal. In the big museums I found out that my way was somehow synchronized, having a polarity to what I was seeing. Abstract expressionism and the European informal made me understand that I have to keep my own authenticity and sensitivity

 Periods and Styles of Nutiu’s oeuvre Following Nutiu’s oeuvre through the decades helped to define the different stages of his artistic unfolding. The first steps towards abstraction were the modular compositions from the early 60s, all of which were paintings on canvas. At the same time he also created objects called assemblage, by using different canvases stuck on each other which created a three dimensional effect. Nutiu was always tempted to expand his works beyond the canvas, by leaving the bi-dimensionality. He referred to the works of this period as Utopias. After composing these objects he returned to painting and began a theme called Dynamic Universe; these paintings were made in the 1970s. In this period Nutiu got the idea to build several vessels with dimensions of about 160x160 cm having a depth of 10 cm, which he filled with water and industrial paints that were usually used to paint cars. These colours could not be absorbed by the water, and floated by their own inertia creating unforeseen shapes. The artist influenced those shapes by intervening with a bar until he liked the outcome. Subsequently he arranged a canvas on the water’s surface.

The canvas absorbed the paint composition which was a moment earlier in the water. Generally the canvas was covered entirely of these "risky effects" produced in print. In some cases Nutiu intervened with a few brushstrokes or he erased some areas
The very innovative object in space "Sapte forme pictate" (means seven painted shapes) from 1969 was also achieved with this technology transfer in water, while some areas have been painted over. In the 1980s Nutiu was inspired by vegetal structures, especially roots and he subsequently labelled this phase of his artistic production as Sections through Fertile Soil. This title clearly reveals that his abstract works were inspired by nature. Further to this title he was also a passionate fly fisherman and he confessed that the roots of the plants and trees he observed on the other side of the shore inspired him. In the 1990s Nutiu entitled his body of work Beyond Appearances. The paintings became more graphic and symbolical which is evidenced seen in the artwork Blue Universe from 1999. The paintings were of course abstract and in the 1990s extremely colourful, sometimes colour spots surrounded by a line like a cloisonné. At the end of the 1990s he was attracted by water - running in rivers or falling in cascades and until the early 2000s he was extremely engaged with this subject. In the last years of his life Nutiu returned to his earlier themes, one of which was Sections through Fertile Soil. For Romul Nutiu the source of inspiration is especially the plant, its stem and root, as it feeds from the soil and returns fertility to it and in this permanent struggle for survival it is akin to man.He re-explored painting the element of water as he had done at the beginning of the 2000s. Wikipedia

Modern Art Max Hermann Maxy

Max Hermann Maxy (also known as M. H. Maxy, born Max Herman; October 26, 1895–July 19, 1971) was a Romanian painter, art professor, scenographer, and professor of German-Jewish descent
Maxy was born in Brăila in 1895, into a Jewish family. In 1902, following his mother's early death, he and his family moved to the national capital Bucharest.[2] Between 1913 and 1916, Maxy studied at the School of Fine Arts, where Camil Ressu and Frederic Storck were among his teachers. He fought in World War I, an experience which significantly influenced his painting

 Maxy, along with artists Iosif Ross and Iosif Steurer, organized an art exhibit in Iași in 1918 which depicted scenes from the World War I front;[1] it was in that year he started using the name "Maxy". In 1922 and 1923, Maxy studied in Berlin, Germany, along with another Romanian artist named Arthur Segal. During this time, he displayed some of his art in Berlin and joined the November Group, a Socialist German cultural organization which promoted expressionist art. Constructivism dominated Maxy's early works, but he later began painting in a moderate modernist style (noted for its realism and narrative mode). Throughout the 1920s and the 1930s, Maxy also displayed his art in Bucharest, often together with other artists. He became a scenographer (set designer) for the Jewish theater in Bucharest in 1939.

 In 1941, when anti-Jewish legislation was passed in Romania, Maxy became the director of this theater. During this time, Maxy also taught students excluded from the Romanian public education system at the private Jewish School of Arts. He became the director of the National Museum of Art of Romania and, in 1949, a university professor at the Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of Arts, as the School of Fine Arts was now called. Beginning in 1954, he received many awards from the Communist Romanian government, including the title "artist emerit" (meaning "emeritus artist").Maxy died in Bucharest in 1971, at the age of 75.His works are shown in many Romanian art exhibits in Bucharest, Prague, Moscow, Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest, Sofia, Belgrade, Athens, Cairo, Damascus, and Istanbul.Wikipedia