Corneliu Baba
Encyclopedia
Corneliu Baba was a Romania
n painter
, primarily a portrait
ist, but also known as a genre painter and an illustrator of books.
Gheorghe Baba, Baba studied briefly at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Bucharest
, but did not receive a degree. His first public exhibition was in 1934 in the spa town
of Băile Herculane
; this led to his studying later that year under Nicolae Tonitza
in Iaşi
, finally receiving a diploma in Fine Arts from the faculty at Iaşi in 1938, where he was named assistant to the Chair of Painting in 1939 and a Professor of Painting in 1946.
Shortly after his 1948 official debut with a painting called The Chess Player at the Art Salon in Bucharest, he was arrested and briefly imprisoned in Galata Prison in Iaşi. The following year he was suspended without explanation from his faculty position and moved from Iaşi to Bucharest.
Despite an initially uneasy relationship with communist authorities
who denounced him as formalist
, Baba soon established himself as an illustrator and artist. In 1955 he was allowed to travel to the Soviet Union
, and won a Gold Medal in an international exhibition in Warsaw
, Poland
. In 1956, Baba accompanied The Chess Player and two other paintings showed at the Venice Biennale
, after which the paintings traveled on to exhibits in Moscow
, Leningrad
, and Prague
.
In 1958 Baba was appointed Professor of Painting at the Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of Fine Arts in Bucharest, where Niculiţă Secrieriu
and Ștefan Câlția
were among his pupils. The same year he received the title of Emeritus
Master of Art. By this time, his earlier problems with the communist authorities appear to have been smoothed over. In the next decade, both he and his paintings were to travel the world, participating in exhibitions in places as diverse as Cairo
, Helsinki
, Vienna
, and New Delhi
, culminating in a 1964 solo exhibition in Brussels
. In 1962, the Romanian government gave him the title of People's Artist
; in 1963 he was appointed a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy
, and in 1964 was similarly honored by the East Berlin
Academy of Fine Art
.
Honors and exhibitions continued to accumulate, ranging from a 1970 solo exhibition in New York City
to the receipt of a Red Star decoration in 1971. While his name became a household word in Romania and, to a lesser extent, throughout the Eastern bloc
, he never achieved comparable fame in the West
.
In 1988, Baba was seriously injured by an accident in his studio, and was immobilized for several months. Shortly before his death in 1997, Baba published his memoir, Notes by an Artist of Eastern Europe. He was posthumously awarded the Prize for Excellence by the Romanian Cultural Foundation
.
Corneliu Baba appears in the People of influence painting of Chinese artists Zhang An, Li Tiezi, and Dai Dudu.
s, although, from the outset of his studies with his father, he was also influenced by expressionism
, art nouveau
, academicism
and "remnants" of impressionism
.
Baba himself cited El Greco
, Rembrandt, and Goya
as particularly strong influences.
This did not put him in good stead either with the official Socialist realism
of the Eastern bloc (where, especially in the early Communist years, he periodically received damning criticism—and sometimes punishment, such as being suspended from teaching—for his "formalism").
Nearly all of Corneliu Baba's work remains in Romania; hardly a major museum in that country is without some of his work. Among his notable works are a 1952 portrait of Mihail Sadoveanu
(now in Bucharest's National Art Museum
) and a 1957 portrait of Krikor Zambaccian, (now in the Zambaccian Museum
, also in Bucharest). One of his few pieces on public display outside of Romania is a rather impressionistic
1977-79 group scene entitled Fear, (one of several in a "Fears" series) in the Szépművészeti Museum in Budapest
.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Baba did an extensive series of paintings of Harlequin
s and "Mad Kings",; most of the latter remained in the artist's personal collection until his death, much as with Francisco Goya
and his "black paintings
".
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, primarily a portrait
Portrait
thumb|250px|right|Portrait of [[Thomas Jefferson]] by [[Rembrandt Peale]], 1805. [[New-York Historical Society]].A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness,...
ist, but also known as a genre painter and an illustrator of books.
Early life
Having first studied under his father, the academic painterAcademic art
Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism,...
Gheorghe Baba, Baba studied briefly at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
, but did not receive a degree. His first public exhibition was in 1934 in the spa town
Spa town
A spa town is a town situated around a mineral spa . Patrons resorted to spas to "take the waters" for their purported health benefits. The word comes from the Belgian town Spa. In continental Europe a spa was known as a ville d'eau...
of Băile Herculane
Baile Herculane
Băile Herculane is a town in Romanian Banat, in Caraş-Severin County, situated in the valley of the Cerna River, between the Mehedinţi Mountains to the east and the Cerna Mountains to the west, elevation 168 meters. Its current population is approximately 6,000...
; this led to his studying later that year under Nicolae Tonitza
Nicolae Tonitza
Nicolae Tonitza was a Romanian painter, engraver, lithographer, journalist and art critic. Drawing inspiration from Post-impressionism and Expressionism, he had a major role in introducing modernist guidelines to local art.-Biography:...
in Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
, finally receiving a diploma in Fine Arts from the faculty at Iaşi in 1938, where he was named assistant to the Chair of Painting in 1939 and a Professor of Painting in 1946.
Shortly after his 1948 official debut with a painting called The Chess Player at the Art Salon in Bucharest, he was arrested and briefly imprisoned in Galata Prison in Iaşi. The following year he was suspended without explanation from his faculty position and moved from Iaşi to Bucharest.
Despite an initially uneasy relationship with communist authorities
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
who denounced him as formalist
Formalism (art)
In art theory, formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content...
, Baba soon established himself as an illustrator and artist. In 1955 he was allowed to travel to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, and won a Gold Medal in an international exhibition in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. In 1956, Baba accompanied The Chess Player and two other paintings showed at the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
, after which the paintings traveled on to exhibits in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, Leningrad
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
, and Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
.
Fame
Niculiţă Secrieriu
Niculiţă Secrieriu was a Romanian painter.He studied at the Institute of Fine Arts "Nicolae Grigorescu" in the class of Corneliu Baba....
and Ștefan Câlția
Stefan Câltia
Ştefan Câlţia is a contemporary Romanian painter.Born in Braşov, he attended the Arts and Music high school in Timişoara from 1959 to 1963, having Julius Podlipny as a teacher...
were among his pupils. The same year he received the title of Emeritus
Emeritus
Emeritus is a post-positive adjective that is used to designate a retired professor, bishop, or other professional or as a title. The female equivalent emerita is also sometimes used.-History:...
Master of Art. By this time, his earlier problems with the communist authorities appear to have been smoothed over. In the next decade, both he and his paintings were to travel the world, participating in exhibitions in places as diverse as Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
, Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
, Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, and New Delhi
New Delhi
New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...
, culminating in a 1964 solo exhibition in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
. In 1962, the Romanian government gave him the title of People's Artist
People's Artist
People's Artist is a honorary title in the Soviet Union, Union republics, in some other Eastern bloc states , as well as in a number of post-Soviet states, modeled after the title of the People's Artist of the USSR....
; in 1963 he was appointed a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy
Romanian Academy
The Romanian Academy is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 acting members who are elected for life....
, and in 1964 was similarly honored by the East Berlin
East Berlin
East Berlin was the name given to the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. It consisted of the Soviet sector of Berlin that was established in 1945. The American, British and French sectors became West Berlin, a part strongly associated with West Germany but a free city...
Academy of Fine Art
Berlin University of the Arts
The Universität der Künste Berlin, UdK is a public art school in Berlin, Germany, one of the four universities in the city...
.
Honors and exhibitions continued to accumulate, ranging from a 1970 solo exhibition in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to the receipt of a Red Star decoration in 1971. While his name became a household word in Romania and, to a lesser extent, throughout the Eastern bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
, he never achieved comparable fame in the West
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
.
In 1988, Baba was seriously injured by an accident in his studio, and was immobilized for several months. Shortly before his death in 1997, Baba published his memoir, Notes by an Artist of Eastern Europe. He was posthumously awarded the Prize for Excellence by the Romanian Cultural Foundation
Romanian Cultural Foundation
The Romanian Cultural Foundation is a Romanian non-governmental organization created by writer Augustin Buzura, with the objective of stimulating cultural, artistic and scientific creations, promoting Romanian spiritual values in Romania and abroad, and fostering inter-cultural dialogue...
.
Corneliu Baba appears in the People of influence painting of Chinese artists Zhang An, Li Tiezi, and Dai Dudu.
Art
Perhaps unfashionably for a 20th century painter, Baba consciously worked in the tradition of the Old MasterOld Master
"Old Master" is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An "old master print" is an original print made by an artist in the same period...
s, although, from the outset of his studies with his father, he was also influenced by expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
, art nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
, academicism
Academic art
Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism,...
and "remnants" of impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
.
Baba himself cited El Greco
El Greco
El Greco was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος .El Greco was born on Crete, which was at...
, Rembrandt, and Goya
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...
as particularly strong influences.
This did not put him in good stead either with the official Socialist realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
of the Eastern bloc (where, especially in the early Communist years, he periodically received damning criticism—and sometimes punishment, such as being suspended from teaching—for his "formalism").
Nearly all of Corneliu Baba's work remains in Romania; hardly a major museum in that country is without some of his work. Among his notable works are a 1952 portrait of Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and political figure, who twice served as acting republican head of state under the communist regime . One of the most prolific Romanian-language writers, he is remembered mostly for his historical and adventure novels, as...
(now in Bucharest's National Art Museum
National Museum of Art of Romania
The National Museum of Art of Romania is located in the former royal palace in Revolution Square, central Bucharest, Romania, completed in 1937...
) and a 1957 portrait of Krikor Zambaccian, (now in the Zambaccian Museum
Zambaccian Museum
The Zambaccian Museum in Bucharest, Romania is a museum in the former home of Krikor Zambaccian , an Armenian businessman and art collector. The museum was founded in 1947, closed by the Ceauşescu regime in 1977, and re-opened in 1992. It is now a branch of The National Museum of Art of Romania...
, also in Bucharest). One of his few pieces on public display outside of Romania is a rather impressionistic
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
1977-79 group scene entitled Fear, (one of several in a "Fears" series) in the Szépművészeti Museum in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Baba did an extensive series of paintings of Harlequin
Harlequin
Harlequin or Arlecchino in Italian, Arlequin in French, and Arlequín in Spanish is the most popularly known of the zanni or comic servant characters from the Italian Commedia dell'arte and its descendant, the Harlequinade.-Origins:...
s and "Mad Kings",; most of the latter remained in the artist's personal collection until his death, much as with Francisco Goya
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...
and his "black paintings
Black Paintings
The Black Paintings is the name given to a group of paintings by Francisco Goya from the later years of his life, likely between 1819–1823. They portray intense, haunting themes, reflective of both his fear of insanity and by then, his bleak outlook on humanity...
".
External links
- Interview with Susara in Observator Cultural Nr. 106, related to his "Un Pictor din Est? series.