Yesterday I stumbled upon an exhibition that I will remember for a long time. I went there for one thing and got so many more. There was a temporary art exhibition, that was not announced, or it was announced previously.
This exhibition proved me once again, that life can always surprise you. You think you've seen it all and art can just repeat itself, then you go to another exhibition and get a very nice surprise that proves your theory is wrong.
This was the first painting looked like and my first thought, when I looked at it, was the Netherlands in the 17th century. Why? Look at the face of the woman, her clothes and the frame. I've seen similar style paintings at the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, in The Hague, at the Louvre, Musée d'Orsay in Paris and so on.
To my surprise, I was told, the artist is a 83 year old gentleman, local, living in Medias, his name is Alexandru Vlasin. I'm smiling now as I ran a search to see what they are saying about the painter and one article calls him the modern Rembrandt of Romania and he's not wrong at all. I put his works in that era, the minute I saw the first few works.
At first I thought maybe just these few paintings, portraits are similar to the style of those years and place, but I was wrong. The other thing that surprised me was that all the paintings were oil. Back in those days oil was ruling, I don't know if painters from the 17th, 18th century used other painting than oil, but today oil is not so common. We have so many types of paint today, so oil is not the only option.
The other thing that became obvious after a few minutes was that these portraits are not the fine type. People usually wanted their portraits to be more beautiful than they were in real life and this caused a lot of trouble between them and the painter. You can imagine not everyone was beautiful, just in real life, but they wanted to look their best. You can do that on a canvas, it's harder when it comes to photographing. You can fool the camera to some extent and use post process to adjust what it's not nice, but the options are still limited. I'm not sure if these were real, living models, or just the imagination of the painter, but as you can see, this lady is not a beauty. Nevertheless, this makes the painting interesting and even more original.
The portrait of this lady was a bit confusing. The head looks more like a male head, except for the long hair, but long hair was common for males in those times.
I need to mention that these portraits were quite small. The frames made them look a bit bigger, but the canvas usually was small. Another thing that I was grateful for was that these paintings were placed on both side of the stairs, where there were no windows and reflection did not bother me this time. Oil and light are not a god mix. Oil reflects the light strongly.
Looks like an old priest to me.
I loved the facial expression of this man, as if he's trying to explain something.
An angry or disappointed lady.
For those of you, who are not familiar with the culture, this is how a shepherd looked like in Romania. Maybe there are still shepherds wearing that furry coat these days, who knows. The painting is good though.
This lady is not pretty at all, but the painting is nice.
While I was looking at these paintings, was asking myself if I could buy one, would I? Buying was out of the question because the artist made it clear none of the artworks were for sale, even though someone offered 20k€ for one painting on the spot.
This was a very interesting one. At a closer look, you can see the texture of the hair, beard and even the jacket. Looking at it from the right angle looks amazing.
Back to my own question, if I would buy one, or not. Probably not and not because of the high prices or because the paintings were not for sale. The truth is, I don't have a storage room for paintings, so what I would buy, would be hung on the wall and looking at these, would take me back to those years and I don't think I would want that every single day. Not to mention the frames don't mach the design of my room. These frames are perfect as they go well with the portraits, but not with modern furniture.
These were the small size portraits exhibited there. I hope you have a favorite. In any case, let me know how do you see these portraits.
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