Ion Theodorescu-Sion
Encyclopedia
Ion Theodorescu-Sion was a Romania
n painter and draftsman, known for his contributions to modern art
and especially for his traditionalist, primitivist
, handicraft
-inspired and Christian painting
. Trained in academic art
, initially an Impressionist
, he dabbled in various modern styles in the years before World War I
. Theodorescu-Sion's palette was interchangeably post-Impressionist
, Divisionist
, Realist, Symbolist
, Synthetist
, Fauve
or Cubist
, but his creation had one major ideological focus: depicting peasant life in its natural setting. In time, Sion contributed to the generational goal of creating a specifically Romanian modern art, located at the intersection of folk tradition, primitivist tendencies borrowed from the West, and 20th-century agrarian politics
.
Initially scandalized by Theodorescu-Sion's experiments, public opinion accepted his tamer style of the mid to late 1910s. Sion was commissioned as a war artist, after which his standing increased. His paintings alternated the monumental depictions of harsh rural environments, and their inhabitants, with luminous Balcic
seascapes and nostalgic records of suburban life. Their search for visual concreteness was a standard for the anti-Impressionist emancipation of the Romanian artistic scene
in the interwar period
.
By the mid 1920s, Sion's style became a visual component of the neo-traditionalist, "Romanianist" and neo-Byzantine current formed around Gândirea
literary magazine. In the years before his death, the emergent avant-garde
was voicing criticism of his new stylistic and ideological choices. Sion's oscillation between modernity and parochialism, his flirtation with authoritarian
politics, and the eventual decline of his work endure as topics of controversy.
brakeman
and the peasant-woman Ioana Ursu, Theodorescu-Sion was born in Ianca
, Brăila County
, and baptized into the Romanian Orthodox Church
. On both sides, his family had origins in Transylvania
's Apuseni Mountains
and the Breadfield
, regions at the time still part of Austria-Hungary
; by popular account, some were Moţi
, that is to say ethnic Romanian
herders with a distinctly rustic lifestyle. Ion spent his early childhood on the Bărăgan Plain
, but grew up into a passionate hiker of the Carpathian Mountains
.
In 1894, having attended primary and secondary school in the Danube
port of Brăila
, the boy left for Bucharest
to study at the National School of Fine Arts
, and graduated in 1897. From 1904 to 1907, with a Ministry of War scholarship to his name, he traveled to France
. Sion consequently enlisted at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
, studying under academic masters Jean-Paul Laurens
and Luc-Olivier Merson
. He returned home upon graduation, but frequently traveled out of Romania on study trips. These took him to the Low Countries
, England
, Italy
and French Algeria
. He was a staff cartoon
ist (caricaturist) for various Romanian satirical papers, including Zavera ("The Trouble"), Nea Ghiţă ("Uncle Ghiţă") and George Ranetti's Furnica.
From his French period, Theodorescu-Sion brought home the echoes of Impressionism, and the more modern influences of Paul Cézanne
, the post-Impressionist, and André Derain
, the Fauve, together with the optical theories of Divisionism. Between 1908 and 1915, the artist, still heavily indebted to the work of Henri Fantin-Latour
, was focused on creating Symbolist compositions with trees. As he took more risks in his experimentation, he began looking to Cubist Georges Braque
for a new way of arranging still life
s. In tandem with such contributions were Realistic works suggesting the influence of Romania's Camil Ressu
.
. Culturally, Theodorescu-Sion also affiliated with a new wave of Romanian artists, who used simple forms, bold colors and clear contours to illustrate mystically-charged subjects. Alongside Sion, this group has been said to include Cecilia Cuţescu-Storck, Friedrich Storck and Iosif Iser
, followed later by Rodica Maniu and Francisc Şirato
. Literary historian George Călinescu
describes this moment as having generated "calligraphic painting": "shaped by the contours and by the invention of ceremonial attitudes", and "most often stripped down to the drawing."
The primitivists' activity in the visual realm is linked to the emergence of unconventional writers and the more radical manifestations of Romanian Symbolist culture
—commentators note their kinship with poet Adrian Maniu (Rodica Maniu's brother) or with the minor Symbolists Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
, N. D. Cocea
and Theodor Cornel. Theodorescu-Sion's first moment in the spotlight was in 1910, at the Tinerimea Artistică collective art show, which shocked the public and the academic authors. The group, joined by sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi
, found itself marginalized inside the exhibit, but received support in the Symbolist press. Building on the conclusions of other researchers, such as Theodor Enescu, literary historian Paul Cernat sees in this movement, called "anti-academic post-impressionism", Romania's first departure from picturesque
salon art, as well as a Romanian version of the Armory Show
phenomenon.
Sion was still regularly present at later Tinerimea salons: in 1913, his featured paintings included a rendition of the Crucifixion
and melancholic depictions of solitary shepherds. A year later, he had a personal exhibit (his first-ever) at the Romanian Atheneum. As noted by journalist Octavian Tăslăuanu, the establishment still viewed his works with embarrassment, and "exiled" them into a lateral hall.
Shortly after the Second Balkan War
of 1913, a Romanian administration took over in Southern Dobruja
, and the region became of interest to Romanian artists. Balcic
(Balchik), once a promising port of export, declined economically, but its vistas and its exotic Muslim
inhabitants made it a popular summertime resort and artists' colony. Theodorescu-Sion joined this phenomenon at its earliest stage, and was, with Ressu, Iser, Cuţescu-Storck and others, a "founding member" of the Balcic painters' community. He was also involved on the art scene of Northern Dobruja
, commissioned to decorate the Constanţa
City Hall palace with a series of mural
s. It was here that he first met art collector and mecena Krikor Zambaccian, who would purchase an exhibit a sizable portion of his later canvasses, including Moara din Balcic ("The Balchik Mill"). Zambaccian remembered Sion as a talented but peculiar and vindictive artist, who posed as artistic mentor but could not stand actual competition.
, advising his young pupil Lola Schmierer Roth to do the same—they both relied on a proto-Cubist composition into solid shapes, for which the model was Cézanne. Co-opted as a teacher at the National School of Fine Arts, Theodorescu-Sion was also one of the founding members of the Artists' Society, a leading Romanian professional association.
As Romania entered World War I
in 1916, Ion Theodorescu-Sion was forced to interrupt his work on the Constanţa murals. Once drafted into the Romanian Land Forces
, he returned to official and academic art: he was employed by Chief of Staff Dumitru Iliescu to depict the Romanian Armed Forces
in action. Sion witnessed (and painted) the subsequent storming of the Romanian front by the Central Powers
, and joined the exodus of Romanian soldiers and civil authorities into the eastern region of Moldavia
. He was in Iaşi
, the provisional capital, where he began collaborating with other war artists driven away by the defeats. In 1918, Sion joined them as they broke with Tinerimea, creating the new artistic forum Arta Română ("Romanian Art")—Ressu, Nicolae Tonitza
, Ştefan Dimitrescu
and Oscar Han
were among the other main affiliates.
After the Romanian authorities returned to Bucharest, Sion's work was featured in the Franklin Hall salon organized by Minerva Publishers
(1919). He had an episodic flirtation with socialism
, and, as noted by journalist Tudor Teodorescu-Branişte, helped out in the 1920 funeral ceremony of Marxist
theorist Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
: "The great old man [...] was being laid down on a bier that a group of socialist painters, headed by Teodorescu Sion, had previously wrapped in red fabric
." His wartime conduct and artistic merits resulted in formal recognition, and he was granted high honors—the Order of the Crown
(as Officer) and Bene Merenti Medal, both in 1923. The same year, he participated in the Arta Română exhibit with Argeş County
landscapes, including Fântâna lui Manole ("Manole
's Fountain").
During the interwar period
, in addition to Tinerimea and Arta Română salons, Theodorescu-Sion exhibited his work at the Atheneum, the Universul
newspaper art show, Dalles Gallery and various other venues. With Ressu and Arthur Verona, Sion was also co-founder, in 1921, of Romania's first artists' trade union
(Sindicatul Artelor Frumoase), which militated for basic social security
but also had a political and (according to art expert Vasile Radu) "utopian" agenda. Briefly, their plans earned official support during the interval when Victor Eftimiu
, a Symbolist playwright and rich art collector, was Minister of Culture and the Arts. In the early interwar years, Sion was also one of the art experts employed in the authentication of paintings by the Romanian classic Nicolae Grigorescu
.
magazine. Welcomed there by art columnist Oscar Walter Cisek
, and later by editor in chief Nichifor Crainic
, he provided illustrations to 1923's Satul meu ("My Village"), by Gândirist poet laureate Ion Pillat
.
The painter looked favorably to Gândireas quest for a new national specificity in art, or "Romanianism". The authors of a 1970 retrospective, published with Editura Meridiane, describe the period as follows: "From very different perspectives, the magazines Viaţa Românească
and Gândirea [...] militated for the creation of artworks inspired from the Romanian reality; and if, at a later date, Gândirism would bear the imprint of exacerbated nationalism, as one of the carriers for the far right
ideology, it is no less true that, in its beginnings, the magazine defined its aesthetic credo by balancing it against art's necessity of expressing a national reality." In an interview with author Felix Aderca
, Sion claimed: "The artistic feeling of Romanianism is separated from those of other peoples by a special sensitivity. Discretion applied to delicacy, harmony in a subdued chromatic. All things in union, calm and clear like a midsummer's afternoon." Gogîltan links Theodorescu-Sion's main period with the establishment of Greater Romania
: "Ion Theodorescu-Sion 'national-themed' canvasses were the visual rendition of a United Kingdom of Romania geography, following its incorporation of Transylvania, Banat
, Crişana
and Bukovina
in the year 1918." She believes that Sion's passion for depicting shepherds on their seasonal treks, or transhumance
, is a symbol for Greater Romania as people meeting over pasture
s.
Re-adapting himself to what critic Tudor Vianu
calls "the mountaineer's experience", Sion was resuming his travels deep into the mountains, in both Argeş County and areas of Transylvania. Of all the paintings he presented for the public during the Ileana Gallery Art Show in 1925, the vast majority were landscapes of the mountains, or compositions with shepherds and mountain-folk such as La isvorul Troiţei ("At the Troiţa [Trinity] Spring"), alternating with new Balcic seascapes. There is the occasional still life: Roz şi roş ("Pink and Red"), which probably alluded to a poem by Transylvanian author Octavian Goga
, impressed Goga and was bought for the state by Ioan Alexandru Lapedatu. Sion returned to the same venue in early 1926, when his exhibited a diverse selection of his newer compositions, and was rewarded with a higher class Order of the Crown.
A noted figure on Bucharest's bohemian scene
, the painter frequented the artistic-literary club at Casa Capşa
restaurant. He sat at the same table with some of the modernist and neo-traditionalist writers (Camil Baltazar
, Liviu Rebreanu
, Vasile Voiculescu
, Ilarie Voronca
), and, story goes, was once caught up in a cake fight with the satirist and prankster Păstorel Tedoreanu. Sion satisfied public expectations with portraits of the Bucharest upper middle class
and proposed a design for the Vasile Alecsandri Mausoleum. He lost the latter commission to Paul Molda—reportedly, Sion preserved a bitter grudge against the Romanian Academy
, who had ruled against him in this matter.
in Barcelona
, Spain
, and was part of the 1930 international exhibits in The Hague
and Amsterdam
.
By then, he had turned his back on the portrait genre, including on his trademark canvasses of peasants and shepherds, and his art became semi-abstract. He was seen in modernist circles, and contributed to the 1934 exhibit Peisajul bucureştean ("The Landscape of Bucharest"), with paintings dating back to 1919. A year later, he had a retrospective show at Dalles, which ran parallel to the debut exhibit of Alexandru Ciucurencu
. Zambaccian recalls that Sion felt jealousy toward Ciucurencu's fast rise. According to Zambaccian's own account: "And since I was more preoccupied with Ciucurencu than Theodorescu Sion, he got upset and put up a sign on the door of his exhibit: 'No Entry for Dogs and Zambaccian'. Of course the storm soon subsided. The painter's wife tore off the card, and Theodorescu Sion kissed me when we met again!"
During the final five years of his life, Sion was becoming a sympathizer of Romania's King
, the authoritarian
Carol II
; with Olga Greceanu and Marius Bunescu
, he represented, under Carol's rule, the officially-supported version of modern painting. His work was again featured at a world's fair, the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris
. The same year, he was one of the artists involved in decorating the Bucharest Royal Palace (National Museum of Art)
, and was registered as a state-approved church muralist by government ordinance.
Theodorescu-Sion died in Bucharest, on March 31, 1939, and was buried in a Bellu cemetery crypt. His last selection of works was presented to the public as part of the Official Salon, which opened the same month in Bucharest. Gândirea published his obituary, signed by Crainic, and opening with the words: "Theodorescu-Sion died unexpectedly, in the full summer of his life and of his boundlessly fecund talent."
contended: "Teodorescu Sion is a new talent that ought to work hard before reaching the profundity of observation which makes one an artist. He is altogether too preoccupied with technical matters and too superficial in his drawing." Five years later, Tăslăuanu was to assess: "Mr. Theodorescu-Sion's art [...] doesn't agree with all people on first impression. [...] The primitive and decorative genre, with simple lines and expressive planes, has not won [it] many adherents. His way of seeing and rendering things seen relates him to the modern art of other countries." However, "[his canvasses] are like those women who do not seek to please the eye and to resemble others. Once you get close to them, once you get to know them and study them, you fall under the spell of their profound simplicity and beauty."
As noted in 1913 by Luceafărul art columnist G. Duma, Sion took his painting "science" from French academies and "the grand masters", techniques from Synthetism
in his religious work, and modern decorative elements in his landscapes. Duma describes Sion's 1913 paintings, especially Crai nou ("New Moon") and the Crucifixion, as a spiritual journey, and concludes: "In vibrant colors, with well-ordered planes, always directing us to the art of the future, the conscious painter Theodorescu-Sion dreams of and puts into song that aria
which leads to immortality." Art historians have since disagreed about young Sion's focus on the existential mystery. Mariana Vida calls his early compositions "pathetically Symbolist", but, according to Amelia Pavel, his visions of solitary trees fuse Art Nouveau
, "with its twisted lineaments", with elements taken out of Expressionism
. She writes: "the leafless tree [is] a symbol of human alienation, of human powerlessness when faced with the immensity of nature". Pavel is explicitly contradicted by fellow Romanian scholar Dan Grigorescu: "the tree motif is probably closer to [Sion's] decorative-muralist vision of a hallmark monumentality, with its ethnicist
implications".
Beyond the Symbolist context, Theodorescu-Sion's primitivism was a form of social investigation. G. Duma was among the early ones to describe Sion as the voice of a specific Romanian sensibility: "Theodorescu-Sion's art is the echo of a people's feelings [...]. It is the atavism
of our purest art [...]. The artist creates, and the people he represents lives on through him, making it known to all other nations with definitive characteristics that [...] the sources of its own dreams are coming to light under a creative power. [...] One feels spiritually connected to Theodorescu-Sion, because one finds, buried into his pastures, the labor and suffering of a race that has produced the painter himself." According to Anca Gogîltan, the Tinerimea art show of 1910 was a watershed moment in the relationship between urban modern art and the rural majority of Romania, as both Theodorescu-Sion and Camil Ressu
tackled rural life without idyllic conventionalism or moral indignation. She refers in particular to Sion's Transylvanian-themed Arat în Munţii Abrudului ("Ploughing in the Mountains of Abrud
"), "underlining man's civilizing action" rather than expressing "social critique". Prior to World War I, Gogîltan argues, Sion and Ressu were the visual partners of Romanian agrarianism
(or Poporanism
), seeking to emphasize, like Mihail Sadoveanu
in the literary field, the "dignity", "resilience" and economic importance of the Romanian peasantry.
With his trips in Southern Dobruja
, his palette became more luminous, as discussed by Tăslăuanu: "In new Dobruja with its effusion of light and warmth, all colors are lighter; countours more imprecise, less defined; the coloring mixture and contrast more pronounced and richer. In the light-steeped atmosphere of Balcic and Deliorman
, the artist found subjects that agree with his understanding of poetic color." By 1919, he was also showing an interest in the landscape of suburbia. Cultural historian Sorin Alexandrescu argues that the resulting paintings, where the focus is on women and children, have an atmosphere of "calm" and "balance". These scenes of family life contrast with his other preoccupations of the late 1910s. As Oscar Walter Cisek
notes, Sion's colors were still luminous, but his canvasses "seemed to have concentrated [...] something from the darkness of the great war", and, for a while, huddled together "boulders of sheer matter". According to Cisek, this preference hurt Sion's art for the next few years, but began to wear out with the completion of La isvorul Troiţei.
In the context of Romanian artistic modernity, the parallel evolution of Sion and Iosif Iser
has intrigued various commentators. Reviewer Gheorghe Oprescu argues that the resemblance between the two is primarily modulated by Sion's temperamental changes, by his "restless, perhaps less sure of itself, being". Another interwar critic, Aurel D. Broşteanu, writes that Sion (like Iser, but with more rustic influences) contributed to "the assimilation of a pictorial objectivity", and set it out against "amorphous and disorganized Impressionism."
aesthetics remains a much debated phase in his activity. Although the magazine's staff columnist noted with delight that he had abandoned his "belabored and obscure" methods for a "direct sensitivity", various authors propose that neo-traditionalism was the culmination of Theodorescu-Sion's decades of experiment. As a conclusion to his "calligraphic painting" theory, George Călinescu
notes that "bit by bit, Romanian painting was gliding into the Neo-Byzantine", while Cisek sees the 1920s Sion as a Romanian anti-Impressionist painter of the "volume" and the "classical form", compatible with Cézanne, Derain or Max Unold. Likewise, Tudor Vianu
refers to La izvorul Troiţei and other works from ca. 1925 as compositions of brute volumes, creating organic relationships between the figures and the landscape, an against claims that Theodorescu-Sion had become a neoclassic
. Amelia Pavel additionally writes that the mature Sion returned to painting trees, with Expressionist filtered through Derain's pictorial techniques and, more characteristically, with a growing interest in making others discover the rural landscape of Romania. According to the Meridiane authors, his "rhythmic sequencing of volumes" shows a mix of influences distilled from contemporary Constructivism
and echoes of the Symbolist master Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
.
The environment typically depicted in most of Theodorescu-Sion's post-1918 creative periods is that of the mountains, of Argeş and of Motzenland
. Vianu proposes that Theodorescu-Sion successfully fabricated himself the mentality of mountain dweller, with broken horizons and human figures seen from up close, with a somber palette that suggests "the coolness and secrecy one finds in a forest canopy." He notes: "one may document the nature of the man who created this painting style with his famous Self-portrait he exhibited [in 1925], where the protruding anatomy of his face, the unibrow, the one eye open and scanning, evoke in truth the very image of an ancestor from the mountains." Sion's polemic with urban life was becoming explicit. As historian Anca Gogîltan writes, one of his Peisaje ("Ladscapes"), dating ca. 1922, has "the delicate figure of a peasant woman showing up on the edge of a city, dominated by the modern city as a densely packed background, seemingly a screen of geometric shapes." Still lifes such as Roz şi roş, she notes, show that he catered to the public's growing interest in folk art items, depicting rustic plates or cruses; other works make note of the actual hierarchies of the rural space, showing women thoroughly involved in household chores such as laundering. As noted in 1931 by Broşteanu, there were three deep influences on Sion's still lifes and portraits: the antique ceramic art of Romania, alongside Derain's pictorial vision, and, "unmistakably" so, the post-Impressionist canvasses of Ştefan Luchian
.
According to his promoter Cisek, Theodorescu-Sion's organic treatment of nature emanates from "the fundamental law" of Romania's ancient folk arts, namely: "man does not master surrounding nature; he grows from the stony and craggy soil [...] like plants, like trees, like animals." This, Cisek argues, was the revelation of a true artistic expression of the Romanian soul, opposed to the idyllic canvasses of Impressionist master Nicolae Grigorescu
, but akin to the Poporanist prose of Calistrat Hogaş. In 1926, he assessed: "It has been said—and many among the artistically illiterate continue to repeat as much to this day—that only Grigorescu's art can ever be Romanian, and that Theodorescu-Sion's painting can have nothing in common with the substance of our soil. [...] tomorrow perhaps, [he] may find himself able to overturn skeptical impressions and theories". Cisek depicts Sion as Romania's "best connoisseur of artistic techniques", with a "sovereign mastery", locating him at the opposite end from post-Grigorescu official art. Sion's understanding of national specificity, he argues, had nothing in common with the "mulligan" traditionalism of Octav Băncilă
and Kimon Loghi: "if Mr. Loghi is a painter, then Teodorescu-Sion must surely be something else entirely! One should bear in mind that Mr. Teodorescu-Sion is still developing, whereas 'Master' Loghi has reached his summit. The summit of mediocrity." Contrarily, Nichifor Crainic
, who was a Grigorescu aficionado, posthumously described Sion as Grigorescu's one equal; however, he noted, Sion bowed to commissions, and as such never produced an actual masterpiece.
Vianu's friend and Gândirea contributor Lucian Blaga
, a poet-philosopher on the search for Romanian specificity, applauded Theodorescu-Sion's paintings of "super-shepherds and super-peasants" in "Romanian landscapes", while, from another side of modern literature, Victor Eftimiu
celebrated Sion as a "cultured" and "refined" figure among the traditionalists. Art reviewer Petru Comarnescu
also suggests that Theodorescu-Sion did in fact live up to the expectation of a purely Romanian art, by going back to the "naturalized Byzantine art
" of medieval muralists, particularly so in Şipotul. Although he constructs a similar argument, the religious commentator Crainic finds that Sion was less secure as a Christian artist, even though, he notes, Gândirea itself encouraged him to paint modern Romanian icons
.
The mixture of themes and the controversies surrounding Gândirist politics have also touched Sion's artistic contributions. In the 1920s, the artistic vision proposed by Sion and Ressu was being contested by the avant-garde
school of Contimporanul
. Also inspired by primitive art, its leaders Ion Vinea and Marcel Janco
refused to view the others as actual exponents of peasant traditions. The more radical experimenters, including Sion's student Jacques Hérold, rejected tame modernism altogether, turning to Surrealism
; but young neo-traditionalists such as Elena Popea found in it a source of inspiration. Retrospectively, philosopher and curator Erwin Kessler finds in Sion the exponent of "a reactionary
Romanian modernism": artistic nationalism, coming at a time when all modern Romanian art was divided along ethnic lines ("the ethnic component of classical modernism played an important role, one that should be explained, not occulted"). Kessler additionally notes that there is a radical component to Sion's belief in the organic relationship of men and the soil, likening it to the main concepts of Romanian nationalism and traditionalism—from A. C. Cuza
's antisemitism to Virgil Madgearu
's agrarianism, and passing through Blaga's theory on folk architecture. Also an antisemite, Crainic contended that Sion's art never made an impression on the art market, since the buyers were "mostly Jewish".
Various critics have noted that Sion's works of the 1920s and '30s are generally awkward, "scholastic", or geometrical and impersonal. The Meridiane study finds some of his works to be "emphatic", noting that Sion "does not reach into the philosophical meaning of folk mythology, retaining only its picturesque exterior."
makes an oblique—and, Sorin Alexandrescu points out, chronologically inaccurate—mention of his urban landscapes in the 1933 novel Patul lui Procust; Alexandrescu believes that it serves to amplify the nostalgic mood in that particular fragment of the book. In addition to his self-portraits, Sion's likeness was preserved in a bust, the work of sculptor Corneliu Medrea (according to Nichifor Crainic, Medrea "wonderfully" captured the painter's proud demeanor and physical beauty). Medrea also designed Sion's crypt at Bellu cemetery.
Sion's fame declined with the years. His cultural legacy was in part preserved by his Gândirea colleagues, including those who later moved into far right
politics. After World War II
and the establishment of Romania's communist regime
, some of the latter were arrested, while others fled abroad. One of the latter was political journalist Pamfil Şeicaru, who even took some of Sion's paintings with him when he relocated to Francoist Spain. In 1972, Gândireas pro-fascist
editor Crainic had been released from jail and, once rehabilitated
, was writing chronicles in Glasul Patriei, a communist magazine for the Romanian diaspora
. His article on Theodorescu-Sion was read and admired by Şeicaru, who wrote back to thank his former employer.
The National Museum of Art of Romania
(MNAR) has a sizable Theodorescu-Sion collection. Much of it has been included in the Modern Romanian Art Gallery, reopened and rearranged by MNAR in 2001. Although long expected by critics, this new collection sparked debates: critic Gheorghe Vida found that Sion's presence, like that of other modern artists, was unjustly overshadowed by the inclusion of lesser, "second-shelf", painters of the interwar age. A 2006 donation of the Lola Schmierer Roth collection also supplemented MNAR's Theodorescu-Sion fund with works he had set aside for his former pupil. Other sizable Sion collections are held by the art museums of Constanţa
and Tulcea
, and by the Zambaccian Museum
in Bucharest.
Still emergent after the Romanian Revolution of 1989
, the Romanian art market was ambivalent in its treatment of Theodorescu-Sion's work. Writing in 2009, art critic Pavel Şuşară denounced "an unacceptable disagreement" between Sion's status as a "first-class artist" and the low starting prices of his canvasses, as opposed to the "exorbitant sums" fetched by painters such as Sabin Bălaşa
. That year, his Cele trei vârste ("The Three Ages") was sold for 32,000 lei
. Interest in Theodorescu-Sion's work appears to have renewed itself by 2010, when the auctioned Sions fetched prices of the highest range.
The avant-garde's polemic with Sion's neo-traditionalism continues posthumously. In 2009, Erwin Kessler organized a collective show with the theme "Pork". Kessler explained that the pig, the staple food of modern Romania's consumerism
, stood to replace the sheep as the "totem
" of Theodorescu-Sion and Nicolae Grigorescu. The tongue-in-cheek exhibit featured conceptual art
works by Matei Bejenaru, Dumitru Gorzo, Ion Grigorescu
, Dan Perjovschi
and various others.
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 and draftsman, known for his contributions to modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
and especially for his traditionalist, primitivist
Primitivism
Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics...
, handicraft
Handicraft
Handicraft, more precisely expressed as artisanic handicraft, sometimes also called artisanry, is a type of work where useful and decorative devices are made completely by hand or by using only simple tools. It is a traditional main sector of craft. Usually the term is applied to traditional means...
-inspired and Christian painting
Christian art
Christian art is sacred art produced in an attempt to illustrate, supplement and portray in tangible form the principles of Christianity, though other definitions are possible. Most Christian groups use or have used art to some extent, although some have had strong objections to some forms of...
. Trained in academic art
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,...
, initially an Impressionist
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...
, he dabbled in various modern styles in the years before World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Theodorescu-Sion's palette was interchangeably post-Impressionist
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
, Divisionist
Divisionism
Divisionism was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colors into individual dots or patches which interacted optically....
, Realist, Symbolist
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
, Synthetist
Synthetism
Synthetism is a term used by post-Impressionist artists like Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard and Louis Anquetin to distinguish their work from Impressionism. Earlier, Synthetism has been connected to the term Cloisonnism, and later to Symbolism...
, Fauve
Fauvism
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...
or Cubist
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
, but his creation had one major ideological focus: depicting peasant life in its natural setting. In time, Sion contributed to the generational goal of creating a specifically Romanian modern art, located at the intersection of folk tradition, primitivist tendencies borrowed from the West, and 20th-century agrarian politics
Agrarianism
Agrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values...
.
Initially scandalized by Theodorescu-Sion's experiments, public opinion accepted his tamer style of the mid to late 1910s. Sion was commissioned as a war artist, after which his standing increased. His paintings alternated the monumental depictions of harsh rural environments, and their inhabitants, with luminous Balcic
Balchik
Balchik is a Black Sea coastal town and seaside resort in the Southern Dobruja area of northeastern Bulgaria. It is located in Dobrich Oblast and is 42 km northeast of Varna...
seascapes and nostalgic records of suburban life. Their search for visual concreteness was a standard for the anti-Impressionist emancipation of the Romanian artistic scene
Art of Romania
Art of Romania encompasses the artists and artistic movements in Romania.-Romanian contemporary and modern artists:* Almaşan Virgil* Adela Andea* George Apostu* Corneliu Baba* Calin Baban* Sabin Bălaşa* Horia Bernea* Traian Brădean...
in the interwar period
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
.
By the mid 1920s, Sion's style became a visual component of the neo-traditionalist, "Romanianist" and neo-Byzantine current formed around Gândirea
Gândirea
Gândirea , known during its early years as Gândirea Literară - Artistică - Socială , was a Romanian literary, political and art magazine.- Overview :Founded by Cezar Petrescu and D. I...
literary magazine. In the years before his death, the emergent avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
was voicing criticism of his new stylistic and ideological choices. Sion's oscillation between modernity and parochialism, his flirtation with authoritarian
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
politics, and the eventual decline of his work endure as topics of controversy.
Background and early life
The son of a Romanian RailwaysCaile Ferate Române
Căile Ferate Române is the official designation of the state railway carrier of Romania. Romania has a railway network of of which are electrified and the total track length is . The network is significantly interconnected with other European railway networks, providing pan-European passenger...
brakeman
Brakeman
A brakeman is a rail transport worker whose original job it was to assist the braking of a train by applying brakes on individual wagons. The advent of through brakes on trains made this role redundant, although the name lives on in the United States where brakemen carry out a variety of functions...
and the peasant-woman Ioana Ursu, Theodorescu-Sion was born in Ianca
Ianca
Ianca is a town in Brăila County, Romania. At the 2002 census, the town had a population of 12,886 people, making it Brăila County's second-largest urban locality.-Administration:...
, Brăila County
Braila County
Brăila is a county of Romania, in Muntenia, with the capital city at Brăila.- Demographics :In 2002, Brăila had a population of 373,174 and the population density was 78/km².*Romanians – 98%*Romas, Russians, Lipovans, Aromanians and others....
, and baptized into the Romanian Orthodox Church
Romanian Orthodox Church
The Romanian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church. It is in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox churches, and is ranked seventh in order of precedence. The Primate of the church has the title of Patriarch...
. On both sides, his family had origins in Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
's Apuseni Mountains
Apuseni Mountains
The Apuseni Mountains is a mountain range in Transylvania, Romania, which belongs to the Western Carpathians, also called Occidentali in Romanian. Their name translates from Romanian as Mountains "of the sunset" i.e. "western". The highest peak is "Cucurbăta Mare" - 1849 metres, also called Bihor...
and the Breadfield
Breadfield
The Breadfield is a region in southwest Transylvania , between Orăştie and Sebeş in the Transylvanian Saxon land, near the Mureş River. The central settlement is Cugir ....
, regions at the time still part of Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
; by popular account, some were Moţi
Tara Motilor
Țara Moților , also known as Țara de Piatră is an ethnogeographical region of Romania in the Apuseni Mountains, on the superior basin of the Arieș and Crişul Alb River rivers...
, that is to say ethnic Romanian
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
herders with a distinctly rustic lifestyle. Ion spent his early childhood on the Bărăgan Plain
Baragan Plain
The Bărăgan Plain is a steppe plain in south-eastern Romania. It makes up much of the eastern part of the Wallachian Plain. The region is known for its black soil and a rich humus, and is mostly a cereal-growing area....
, but grew up into a passionate hiker of the Carpathian Mountains
Carpathian Mountains
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe...
.
In 1894, having attended primary and secondary school in the Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
port of Brăila
Braila
Brăila is a city in Muntenia, eastern Romania, a port on the Danube and the capital of Brăila County, in the close vicinity of Galaţi.According to the 2002 Romanian census there were 216,292 people living within the city of Brăila, making it the 10th most populous city in Romania.-History:A...
, the boy left for 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....
to study at the National School of Fine Arts
Bucharest National University of Arts
The Bucharest National University of Arts is a university in Bucharest preparing students in fine arts.The university has three faculties:* The Faculty of Fine Arts* The Faculty of Decorative Arts and Design* The Faculty of History and Theory of Art...
, and graduated in 1897. From 1904 to 1907, with a Ministry of War scholarship to his name, he traveled to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. Sion consequently enlisted at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts
The École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts is the distinguished National School of Fine Arts in Paris, France.The École des Beaux-arts is made up of a vast complex of buildings located at 14 rue Bonaparte, between the quai Malaquais and the rue Bonaparte, in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Près,...
, studying under academic masters Jean-Paul Laurens
Jean-Paul Laurens
Jean-Paul Laurens , was a French painter and sculptor, and one of the last major exponents of the French Academic style.Born in Fourquevaux, he was a pupil of Léon Cogniet and Alexandre Bida...
and Luc-Olivier Merson
Luc-Olivier Merson
Luc-Olivier Merson was a French academic painter and illustrator also known for his postage stamp and currency designs....
. He returned home upon graduation, but frequently traveled out of Romania on study trips. These took him to the Low Countries
Low Countries
The Low Countries are the historical lands around the low-lying delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers, including the modern countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and parts of northern France and western Germany....
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and French Algeria
French Algeria
French Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica and Réunion are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest...
. He was a staff cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
ist (caricaturist) for various Romanian satirical papers, including Zavera ("The Trouble"), Nea Ghiţă ("Uncle Ghiţă") and George Ranetti's Furnica.
From his French period, Theodorescu-Sion brought home the echoes of Impressionism, and the more modern influences of Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
, the post-Impressionist, and André Derain
André Derain
André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.-Early years:...
, the Fauve, together with the optical theories of Divisionism. Between 1908 and 1915, the artist, still heavily indebted to the work of Henri Fantin-Latour
Henri Fantin-Latour
Henri Fantin-Latour was a French painter and lithographer best known for his flower paintings and group portraits of Parisian artists and writers.-Biography:...
, was focused on creating Symbolist compositions with trees. As he took more risks in his experimentation, he began looking to Cubist Georges Braque
Georges Braque
Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...
for a new way of arranging still life
Still life
A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made...
s. In tandem with such contributions were Realistic works suggesting the influence of Romania's Camil Ressu
Camil Ressu
Camil Ressu was a Romanian painter and academic, one of the most significant art figures of Romania.-Early life and career:Born in Galaţi, Ressu originated from an Aromanian family that migrated to Romania from Macedonia at the start of the 19th century. His father, Constantin Ressu, who was a...
.
Symbolist movement and Balcic colony
Sion was received into the innovative and eclectic society Tinerimea Artistică, as one of its Symbolist recruits, in 1909, and shortly after exhibited his religious-themed portrait Lux in tenebris lucet . The same year, he sent his works to the Official Bucharest Salon, and shared with others the jury's Second Prize ex aequo. In tandem, he began hiking through the Carpathian and rural regions of Transylvania. His paintings record a growing interest in lives of its peasant inhabitants (and thus in his own peasant roots), with focus on the Romanian-inhabited areas of Apuseni, Breadfield or Mărginimea SibiuluiMarginimea Sibiului
Mărginimea Sibiului is an area which comprises 18 Romanian localities in the south-western part of the Sibiu County, in southern Transylvania, all of them having a unique ethnological, cultural, architectural and historical heritage.-Position:...
. Culturally, Theodorescu-Sion also affiliated with a new wave of Romanian artists, who used simple forms, bold colors and clear contours to illustrate mystically-charged subjects. Alongside Sion, this group has been said to include Cecilia Cuţescu-Storck, Friedrich Storck and Iosif Iser
Iosif Iser
Iosif Iser was a Romanian painter and graphic artist.Born to a Jewish family, he was initially inspired by Expressionism, creating drawings with thick, unmodulated, lines and steep angles...
, followed later by Rodica Maniu and Francisc Şirato
Francisc Sirato
Francisc Şirato was a Romanian painter, graphic artist, art critic, and designer.-External links:*...
. Literary historian George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
describes this moment as having generated "calligraphic painting": "shaped by the contours and by the invention of ceremonial attitudes", and "most often stripped down to the drawing."
The primitivists' activity in the visual realm is linked to the emergence of unconventional writers and the more radical manifestations of Romanian Symbolist culture
Symbolist movement in Romania
The Symbolist movement in Romania, active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked the development of Romanian culture in both literature and visual arts...
—commentators note their kinship with poet Adrian Maniu (Rodica Maniu's brother) or with the minor Symbolists Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
Alexandru Bogdan-Pitesti
Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti was a Romanian Symbolist poet, essayist, and art and literary critic, who was also known as a journalist and left-wing political agitator. A wealthy landowner, he invested his fortune in patronage and art collecting, becoming one of the main local promoters of modern art,...
, N. D. Cocea
N. D. Cocea
N. D. Cocea was a Romanian journalist, novelist, critic and left-wing political activist, known as a major but controversial figure in the field of political satire...
and Theodor Cornel. Theodorescu-Sion's first moment in the spotlight was in 1910, at the Tinerimea Artistică collective art show, which shocked the public and the academic authors. The group, joined by sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
, found itself marginalized inside the exhibit, but received support in the Symbolist press. Building on the conclusions of other researchers, such as Theodor Enescu, literary historian Paul Cernat sees in this movement, called "anti-academic post-impressionism", Romania's first departure from picturesque
Picturesque
Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...
salon art, as well as a Romanian version of the Armory Show
Armory Show
Many exhibitions have been held in the vast spaces of U.S. National Guard armories, but the Armory Show refers to the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art that was organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors...
phenomenon.
Sion was still regularly present at later Tinerimea salons: in 1913, his featured paintings included a rendition of the Crucifixion
Crucifixion of Jesus
The crucifixion of Jesus and his ensuing death is an event that occurred during the 1st century AD. Jesus, who Christians believe is the Son of God as well as the Messiah, was arrested, tried, and sentenced by Pontius Pilate to be scourged, and finally executed on a cross...
and melancholic depictions of solitary shepherds. A year later, he had a personal exhibit (his first-ever) at the Romanian Atheneum. As noted by journalist Octavian Tăslăuanu, the establishment still viewed his works with embarrassment, and "exiled" them into a lateral hall.
Shortly after the Second Balkan War
Second Balkan War
The Second Balkan War was a conflict which broke out when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its share of the spoils of the First Balkan War, attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on 29 June 1913. Bulgaria had a prewar agreement about the division of region of Macedonia...
of 1913, a Romanian administration took over in Southern Dobruja
Southern Dobruja
Southern Dobruja is an area of north-eastern Bulgaria comprising the administrative districts named for its two principal cities of Dobrich and Silistra...
, and the region became of interest to Romanian artists. Balcic
Balchik
Balchik is a Black Sea coastal town and seaside resort in the Southern Dobruja area of northeastern Bulgaria. It is located in Dobrich Oblast and is 42 km northeast of Varna...
(Balchik), once a promising port of export, declined economically, but its vistas and its exotic Muslim
Islam in Romania
Islam in Romania is followed by only 0.3 percent of population, but has 700 years of tradition in Northern Dobruja, a region on the Black Sea coast which was part of the Ottoman Empire for almost five centuries . In present-day Romania, most adherents to Islam belong to the Tatar and Turkish ethnic...
inhabitants made it a popular summertime resort and artists' colony. Theodorescu-Sion joined this phenomenon at its earliest stage, and was, with Ressu, Iser, Cuţescu-Storck and others, a "founding member" of the Balcic painters' community. He was also involved on the art scene of Northern Dobruja
Northern Dobruja
Northern Dobruja is the part of Dobruja within the borders of Romania. It lies between the lower Danube river and the Black Sea, bordered in south by Bulgarian Southern Dobruja.-Geography:...
, commissioned to decorate the Constanţa
Constanta
Constanța is the oldest extant city in Romania, founded around 600 BC. The city is located in the Dobruja region of Romania, on the Black Sea coast. It is the capital of Constanța County and the largest city in the region....
City Hall palace with a series of mural
Mural
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
s. It was here that he first met art collector and mecena Krikor Zambaccian, who would purchase an exhibit a sizable portion of his later canvasses, including Moara din Balcic ("The Balchik Mill"). Zambaccian remembered Sion as a talented but peculiar and vindictive artist, who posed as artistic mentor but could not stand actual competition.
War artist and Arta Română shows
Around 1914, Sion had distanced entirely himself from Symbolism and the decorative lines of Art NouveauArt 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"...
, advising his young pupil Lola Schmierer Roth to do the same—they both relied on a proto-Cubist composition into solid shapes, for which the model was Cézanne. Co-opted as a teacher at the National School of Fine Arts, Theodorescu-Sion was also one of the founding members of the Artists' Society, a leading Romanian professional association.
As Romania entered World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
in 1916, Ion Theodorescu-Sion was forced to interrupt his work on the Constanţa murals. Once drafted into the Romanian Land Forces
Romanian Land Forces
The Romanian Land Forces is the army of Romania, and the main component of the Romanian Armed Forces. In recent years, full professionalisation and a major equipment overhaul have transformed the nature of the force.The Romanian Land Forces were founded on...
, he returned to official and academic art: he was employed by Chief of Staff Dumitru Iliescu to depict the Romanian Armed Forces
Romanian Armed Forces
The Land Forces, Air Force and Naval Forces of Romania are collectively known as the Romanian Armed Forces...
in action. Sion witnessed (and painted) the subsequent storming of the Romanian front by the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
, and joined the exodus of Romanian soldiers and civil authorities into the eastern region of Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
. He was 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...
, the provisional capital, where he began collaborating with other war artists driven away by the defeats. In 1918, Sion joined them as they broke with Tinerimea, creating the new artistic forum Arta Română ("Romanian Art")—Ressu, 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:...
, Ştefan Dimitrescu
Stefan Dimitrescu
Ştefan Dimitrescu was a Romanian Post-impressionist painter and draftsman.-Biography:Born in Huşi into a modest family, he completed his primary and secondary studies in his hometown...
and Oscar Han
Oscar Han
Oscar Han was a Romanian sculptor and writer. A student of Dimitrie Paciurea at the Academy of Arts in Bucharest, he was a member of the Group of Four together with painters Nicolae Tonitza, Francisc Şirato and Ştefan Dimitrescu...
were among the other main affiliates.
After the Romanian authorities returned to Bucharest, Sion's work was featured in the Franklin Hall salon organized by Minerva Publishers
Editura Minerva
Editura Minerva is one of the largest publishing houses in Romania. Located in Bucharest, it is known, among other things, for publishing classic Romanian literature, children's books, and scientific books.-External links:**...
(1919). He had an episodic flirtation with socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, and, as noted by journalist Tudor Teodorescu-Branişte, helped out in the 1920 funeral ceremony of Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
theorist Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....
: "The great old man [...] was being laid down on a bier that a group of socialist painters, headed by Teodorescu Sion, had previously wrapped in red fabric
Red flag
In politics, a red flag is a symbol of Socialism, or Communism, or sometimes left-wing politics in general. It has been associated with left-wing politics since the French Revolution. Socialists adopted the symbol during the Revolutions of 1848 and it became a symbol of communism as a result of its...
." His wartime conduct and artistic merits resulted in formal recognition, and he was granted high honors—the Order of the Crown
Order of the Crown (Romania)
The Order of the Crown is a chivalric order set up on 14 March 1881 by King Carol I of Romania to commemorate the establishment of the Kingdom of Romania...
(as Officer) and Bene Merenti Medal, both in 1923. The same year, he participated in the Arta Română exhibit with Argeş County
Arges County
Argeș is a county of Romania, in Wallachia, with the capital city at Pitești.-Demographics:In 2002, it had a population of 652,625 and the population density was 95/km².*Romanians – 96%*Roma , and other.-Geography:...
landscapes, including Fântâna lui Manole ("Manole
Mesterul Manole
In Romanian mythology, Meșterul Manole was the chief architect of the Curtea de Argeș Monastery in Wallachia...
's Fountain").
During the interwar period
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
, in addition to Tinerimea and Arta Română salons, Theodorescu-Sion exhibited his work at the Atheneum, the Universul
Universul
Universul was a mass-circulation newspaper in Romania. It existed from 1884 to 1953, and was run by Stelian Popescu from 1914 to 1943 ....
newspaper art show, Dalles Gallery and various other venues. With Ressu and Arthur Verona, Sion was also co-founder, in 1921, of Romania's first artists' trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
(Sindicatul Artelor Frumoase), which militated for basic social security
Social security
Social security is primarily a social insurance program providing social protection or protection against socially recognized conditions, including poverty, old age, disability, unemployment and others. Social security may refer to:...
but also had a political and (according to art expert Vasile Radu) "utopian" agenda. Briefly, their plans earned official support during the interval when Victor Eftimiu
Victor Eftimiu
Victor Eftimiu was an Albanian-Romanian poet, playwright, and a contributor to Sburătorul, a Romanian literary magazine. His works have been performed in the State Jewish Theater of Romania....
, a Symbolist playwright and rich art collector, was Minister of Culture and the Arts. In the early interwar years, Sion was also one of the art experts employed in the authentication of paintings by the Romanian classic Nicolae Grigorescu
Nicolae Grigorescu
Nicolae Grigorescu was one of the founders of modern Romanian painting.-Biography:He was born in Pitaru, Dâmboviţa County, Wallachia. In 1843 the family moved to Bucharest. At a young age , he became an apprentice at the workshop of the painter Anton Chladek and created icons for the church of...
.
Gândirea years
The 1920s were a new period of synthesis in Theodorescu-Sion's life, as he became the artistic exponent of a neo-traditionalist movement centered on GândireaGândirea
Gândirea , known during its early years as Gândirea Literară - Artistică - Socială , was a Romanian literary, political and art magazine.- Overview :Founded by Cezar Petrescu and D. I...
magazine. Welcomed there by art columnist Oscar Walter Cisek
Oscar Walter Cisek
Oscar Walter Cisek was a Romanian writer, diplomat, and art critic, who authored short stories, novels, poems and essays in both German and Romanian.-Biography:...
, and later by editor in chief Nichifor Crainic
Nichifor Crainic
Nichifor Crainic was a Romanian writer, editor, philosopher, poet and theologian famed for his traditionalist and antisemitic activities...
, he provided illustrations to 1923's Satul meu ("My Village"), by Gândirist poet laureate Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat grew up in Bucharest. He was a poet, best known for his volume Pe Argeş în sus and Poeme într-un vers...
.
The painter looked favorably to Gândireas quest for a new national specificity in art, or "Romanianism". The authors of a 1970 retrospective, published with Editura Meridiane, describe the period as follows: "From very different perspectives, the magazines Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
and Gândirea [...] militated for the creation of artworks inspired from the Romanian reality; and if, at a later date, Gândirism would bear the imprint of exacerbated nationalism, as one of the carriers for the far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
ideology, it is no less true that, in its beginnings, the magazine defined its aesthetic credo by balancing it against art's necessity of expressing a national reality." In an interview with author Felix Aderca
Felix Aderca
Felix Aderca or F. Aderca Aderca, also known as Zelicu Froim Adercu or Froim Aderca; March 13, 1891 – December 12, 1962) was a Romanian novelist, playwright, poet, journalist and critic, noted as a representative of rebellious modernism in the context of Romanian literature...
, Sion claimed: "The artistic feeling of Romanianism is separated from those of other peoples by a special sensitivity. Discretion applied to delicacy, harmony in a subdued chromatic. All things in union, calm and clear like a midsummer's afternoon." Gogîltan links Theodorescu-Sion's main period with the establishment of Greater Romania
Greater Romania
The Greater Romania generally refers to the territory of Romania in the years between the First World War and the Second World War, the largest geographical extent of Romania up to that time and its largest peacetime extent ever ; more precisely, it refers to the territory of the Kingdom of...
: "Ion Theodorescu-Sion 'national-themed' canvasses were the visual rendition of a United Kingdom of Romania geography, following its incorporation of Transylvania, Banat
Banat
The Banat is a geographical and historical region in Central Europe currently divided between three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania , the western part in northeastern Serbia , and a small...
, Crişana
Crisana
Crișana is a geographical and historical region divided today between Romania and Hungary, named after the Criș River and its three tributaries: the Crișul Alb, Crișul Negru and Crișul Repede....
and Bukovina
Bukovina
Bukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...
in the year 1918." She believes that Sion's passion for depicting shepherds on their seasonal treks, or transhumance
Transhumance
Transhumance is the seasonal movement of people with their livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. In montane regions it implies movement between higher pastures in summer and to lower valleys in winter. Herders have a permanent home, typically in valleys. Only the herds travel, with...
, is a symbol for Greater Romania as people meeting over pasture
Pasture
Pasture is land used for grazing. Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, cattle, sheep or swine. The vegetation of tended pasture, forage, consists mainly of grasses, with an interspersion of legumes and other forbs...
s.
Re-adapting himself to what critic Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu was a Romanian literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translator. Known for his left-wing and anti-fascist convictions, he had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Romanian literature and art...
calls "the mountaineer's experience", Sion was resuming his travels deep into the mountains, in both Argeş County and areas of Transylvania. Of all the paintings he presented for the public during the Ileana Gallery Art Show in 1925, the vast majority were landscapes of the mountains, or compositions with shepherds and mountain-folk such as La isvorul Troiţei ("At the Troiţa [Trinity] Spring"), alternating with new Balcic seascapes. There is the occasional still life: Roz şi roş ("Pink and Red"), which probably alluded to a poem by Transylvanian author Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga was a Romanian politician, poet, playwright, journalist, and translator.-Life:Born in Răşinari, nearby Sibiu, he was an active member in the Romanian nationalistic movement in Transylvania and of its leading group, the Romanian National Party in Austria-Hungary. Before World War I,...
, impressed Goga and was bought for the state by Ioan Alexandru Lapedatu. Sion returned to the same venue in early 1926, when his exhibited a diverse selection of his newer compositions, and was rewarded with a higher class Order of the Crown.
A noted figure on Bucharest's bohemian scene
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
, the painter frequented the artistic-literary club at Casa Capşa
Casa Capsa
Casa Capşa is a historic restaurant in Bucharest, Romania, first established in 1852. At various times it has also included a hotel; most recently, it reopened as a 61-room hotel 17 June 2003....
restaurant. He sat at the same table with some of the modernist and neo-traditionalist writers (Camil Baltazar
Camil Baltazar
Camil Baltazar was a Romanian-Jewish poet.-Selected works:*Vecernii, 1923*Flaute de mătase, 1923...
, Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu was a Romanian novelist, playwright, short story writer, and journalist.- Life :Born in Târlișua , Transylvania, then part of Austria-Hungary, he was the second of thirteen children born to Vasile Rebreanu, a schoolteacher, and Ludovica Diuganu, descendants of peasants...
, Vasile Voiculescu
Vasile Voiculescu
Vasile Voiculescu was a Romanian poet, short-story writer, playwright, and physician.-Early life and education:Voiculescu was born in Pârscov, Buzău County, Romania, to a family of wealthy peasants. He attended primary school in Pleşcoi, a village near his home, for a year, after which he was sent...
, Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca was a Romanian-French avant-garde poet and essayist.Voronca was of Jewish ethnicity...
), and, story goes, was once caught up in a cake fight with the satirist and prankster Păstorel Tedoreanu. Sion satisfied public expectations with portraits of the Bucharest upper middle class
Upper middle class
The upper middle class is a sociological concept referring to the social group constituted by higher-status members of the middle class. This is in contrast to the term "lower middle class", which is used for the group at the opposite end of the middle class stratum, and to the broader term "middle...
and proposed a design for the Vasile Alecsandri Mausoleum. He lost the latter commission to Paul Molda—reportedly, Sion preserved a bitter grudge against 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....
, who had ruled against him in this matter.
Final decade
Around 1927, Theodorescu-Sion was again concentrating on his murals: his only works at the Official Salon for that year were studies for a wall painting called Şipotul ("Gushing Spring"). Returning to Constanţa in 1928, he helped organize an official art show to mark the semicentennial of Romanian rule over that region. His own paintings were selected to represent Romanian art at Expo 19291929 Barcelona International Exposition
The 1929 Barcelona International Exposition took place from 20 May 1929 to 15 January 1930 in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain...
in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, and was part of the 1930 international exhibits in The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
and Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
.
By then, he had turned his back on the portrait genre, including on his trademark canvasses of peasants and shepherds, and his art became semi-abstract. He was seen in modernist circles, and contributed to the 1934 exhibit Peisajul bucureştean ("The Landscape of Bucharest"), with paintings dating back to 1919. A year later, he had a retrospective show at Dalles, which ran parallel to the debut exhibit of Alexandru Ciucurencu
Alexandru Ciucurencu
Alexandru Ciucurencu was a Romanian Post-Impressionist painter.A collection of Ciucurencu's paintings can be seen in Dr. Frasier Crane's apartment in the sitom Frasier, in the episode "The Guilt Trippers" .-External links:**...
. Zambaccian recalls that Sion felt jealousy toward Ciucurencu's fast rise. According to Zambaccian's own account: "And since I was more preoccupied with Ciucurencu than Theodorescu Sion, he got upset and put up a sign on the door of his exhibit: 'No Entry for Dogs and Zambaccian'. Of course the storm soon subsided. The painter's wife tore off the card, and Theodorescu Sion kissed me when we met again!"
During the final five years of his life, Sion was becoming a sympathizer of Romania's King
King of Romania
King of the Romanians , rather than King of Romania , was the official title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Romania from 1881 until 1947, when Romania was proclaimed a republic....
, the authoritarian
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
Carol II
Carol II of Romania
Carol II reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until 6 September 1940. Eldest son of Ferdinand, King of Romania, and his wife, Queen Marie, a daughter of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the second eldest son of Queen Victoria...
; with Olga Greceanu and Marius Bunescu
Marius Bunescu
Marius Bunescu was a Romanian painter, organizer of the National Museum of Art, and director of the Anastase Simu Museum....
, he represented, under Carol's rule, the officially-supported version of modern painting. His work was again featured at a world's fair, the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. The same year, he was one of the artists involved in decorating the Bucharest Royal Palace (National Museum of Art)
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 was registered as a state-approved church muralist by government ordinance.
Theodorescu-Sion died in Bucharest, on March 31, 1939, and was buried in a Bellu cemetery crypt. His last selection of works was presented to the public as part of the Official Salon, which opened the same month in Bucharest. Gândirea published his obituary, signed by Crainic, and opening with the words: "Theodorescu-Sion died unexpectedly, in the full summer of his life and of his boundlessly fecund talent."
Early experimentation and agrarian themes
Theodorescu-Sion was probably the most protean Romanian oil painter. Sion's interests in trying out formulas was taken with reserve by some in the public. Writing for the Transylvanian readership of Luceafărul, in May 1909, George MurnuGeorge Murnu
George Murnu was a Romanian university professor, archaeologist, historian, translator, and poet of Aromanian origin....
contended: "Teodorescu Sion is a new talent that ought to work hard before reaching the profundity of observation which makes one an artist. He is altogether too preoccupied with technical matters and too superficial in his drawing." Five years later, Tăslăuanu was to assess: "Mr. Theodorescu-Sion's art [...] doesn't agree with all people on first impression. [...] The primitive and decorative genre, with simple lines and expressive planes, has not won [it] many adherents. His way of seeing and rendering things seen relates him to the modern art of other countries." However, "[his canvasses] are like those women who do not seek to please the eye and to resemble others. Once you get close to them, once you get to know them and study them, you fall under the spell of their profound simplicity and beauty."
As noted in 1913 by Luceafărul art columnist G. Duma, Sion took his painting "science" from French academies and "the grand masters", techniques from Synthetism
Synthetism
Synthetism is a term used by post-Impressionist artists like Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard and Louis Anquetin to distinguish their work from Impressionism. Earlier, Synthetism has been connected to the term Cloisonnism, and later to Symbolism...
in his religious work, and modern decorative elements in his landscapes. Duma describes Sion's 1913 paintings, especially Crai nou ("New Moon") and the Crucifixion, as a spiritual journey, and concludes: "In vibrant colors, with well-ordered planes, always directing us to the art of the future, the conscious painter Theodorescu-Sion dreams of and puts into song that aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...
which leads to immortality." Art historians have since disagreed about young Sion's focus on the existential mystery. Mariana Vida calls his early compositions "pathetically Symbolist", but, according to Amelia Pavel, his visions of solitary trees fuse 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"...
, "with its twisted lineaments", with elements taken out of 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...
. She writes: "the leafless tree [is] a symbol of human alienation, of human powerlessness when faced with the immensity of nature". Pavel is explicitly contradicted by fellow Romanian scholar Dan Grigorescu: "the tree motif is probably closer to [Sion's] decorative-muralist vision of a hallmark monumentality, with its ethnicist
Ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism is a form of nationalism wherein the "nation" is defined in terms of ethnicity. Whatever specific ethnicity is involved, ethnic nationalism always includes some element of descent from previous generations and the implied claim of ethnic essentialism, i.e...
implications".
Beyond the Symbolist context, Theodorescu-Sion's primitivism was a form of social investigation. G. Duma was among the early ones to describe Sion as the voice of a specific Romanian sensibility: "Theodorescu-Sion's art is the echo of a people's feelings [...]. It is the atavism
Atavism
Atavism is the tendency to revert to ancestral type. In biology, an atavism is an evolutionary throwback, such as traits reappearing which had disappeared generations before. Atavisms can occur in several ways...
of our purest art [...]. The artist creates, and the people he represents lives on through him, making it known to all other nations with definitive characteristics that [...] the sources of its own dreams are coming to light under a creative power. [...] One feels spiritually connected to Theodorescu-Sion, because one finds, buried into his pastures, the labor and suffering of a race that has produced the painter himself." According to Anca Gogîltan, the Tinerimea art show of 1910 was a watershed moment in the relationship between urban modern art and the rural majority of Romania, as both Theodorescu-Sion and Camil Ressu
Camil Ressu
Camil Ressu was a Romanian painter and academic, one of the most significant art figures of Romania.-Early life and career:Born in Galaţi, Ressu originated from an Aromanian family that migrated to Romania from Macedonia at the start of the 19th century. His father, Constantin Ressu, who was a...
tackled rural life without idyllic conventionalism or moral indignation. She refers in particular to Sion's Transylvanian-themed Arat în Munţii Abrudului ("Ploughing in the Mountains of Abrud
Abrud
Abrud is a town in the north-western part of Alba County, Transylvania, Romania, located on the river Abrud. It administers three villages: Abrud-Sat, Gura Cornei and Soharu.-Population:...
"), "underlining man's civilizing action" rather than expressing "social critique". Prior to World War I, Gogîltan argues, Sion and Ressu were the visual partners of Romanian agrarianism
Agrarianism
Agrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values...
(or Poporanism
Poporanism
The word “poporanism” is derived from “popor”, meaning “people” in the Romanian language. The ideology of Romanian Populism and poporanism are interchangeable. Founded by Constantin Stere in the early 1890s, populism is distinguished by its opposition to socialism, promotion of voting rights for...
), seeking to emphasize, like 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...
in the literary field, the "dignity", "resilience" and economic importance of the Romanian peasantry.
With his trips in Southern Dobruja
Southern Dobruja
Southern Dobruja is an area of north-eastern Bulgaria comprising the administrative districts named for its two principal cities of Dobrich and Silistra...
, his palette became more luminous, as discussed by Tăslăuanu: "In new Dobruja with its effusion of light and warmth, all colors are lighter; countours more imprecise, less defined; the coloring mixture and contrast more pronounced and richer. In the light-steeped atmosphere of Balcic and Deliorman
Ludogorie
The Ludogorie or Deliorman is a region in northeastern Bulgaria stretching over the plateau of the same name. Major cities in the region are Razgrad, Novi Pazar, Pliska and Isperih...
, the artist found subjects that agree with his understanding of poetic color." By 1919, he was also showing an interest in the landscape of suburbia. Cultural historian Sorin Alexandrescu argues that the resulting paintings, where the focus is on women and children, have an atmosphere of "calm" and "balance". These scenes of family life contrast with his other preoccupations of the late 1910s. As Oscar Walter Cisek
Oscar Walter Cisek
Oscar Walter Cisek was a Romanian writer, diplomat, and art critic, who authored short stories, novels, poems and essays in both German and Romanian.-Biography:...
notes, Sion's colors were still luminous, but his canvasses "seemed to have concentrated [...] something from the darkness of the great war", and, for a while, huddled together "boulders of sheer matter". According to Cisek, this preference hurt Sion's art for the next few years, but began to wear out with the completion of La isvorul Troiţei.
In the context of Romanian artistic modernity, the parallel evolution of Sion and Iosif Iser
Iosif Iser
Iosif Iser was a Romanian painter and graphic artist.Born to a Jewish family, he was initially inspired by Expressionism, creating drawings with thick, unmodulated, lines and steep angles...
has intrigued various commentators. Reviewer Gheorghe Oprescu argues that the resemblance between the two is primarily modulated by Sion's temperamental changes, by his "restless, perhaps less sure of itself, being". Another interwar critic, Aurel D. Broşteanu, writes that Sion (like Iser, but with more rustic influences) contributed to "the assimilation of a pictorial objectivity", and set it out against "amorphous and disorganized Impressionism."
Gândirist painter
Theodorescu-Sion's commitment to GândireaGândirea
Gândirea , known during its early years as Gândirea Literară - Artistică - Socială , was a Romanian literary, political and art magazine.- Overview :Founded by Cezar Petrescu and D. I...
aesthetics remains a much debated phase in his activity. Although the magazine's staff columnist noted with delight that he had abandoned his "belabored and obscure" methods for a "direct sensitivity", various authors propose that neo-traditionalism was the culmination of Theodorescu-Sion's decades of experiment. As a conclusion to his "calligraphic painting" theory, George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
notes that "bit by bit, Romanian painting was gliding into the Neo-Byzantine", while Cisek sees the 1920s Sion as a Romanian anti-Impressionist painter of the "volume" and the "classical form", compatible with Cézanne, Derain or Max Unold. Likewise, Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu was a Romanian literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translator. Known for his left-wing and anti-fascist convictions, he had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Romanian literature and art...
refers to La izvorul Troiţei and other works from ca. 1925 as compositions of brute volumes, creating organic relationships between the figures and the landscape, an against claims that Theodorescu-Sion had become a neoclassic
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
. Amelia Pavel additionally writes that the mature Sion returned to painting trees, with Expressionist filtered through Derain's pictorial techniques and, more characteristically, with a growing interest in making others discover the rural landscape of Romania. According to the Meridiane authors, his "rhythmic sequencing of volumes" shows a mix of influences distilled from contemporary Constructivism
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...
and echoes of the Symbolist master Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was a French painter, who became the president and co-founder of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and whose work influenced many other artists.-Life:...
.
The environment typically depicted in most of Theodorescu-Sion's post-1918 creative periods is that of the mountains, of Argeş and of Motzenland
Tara Motilor
Țara Moților , also known as Țara de Piatră is an ethnogeographical region of Romania in the Apuseni Mountains, on the superior basin of the Arieș and Crişul Alb River rivers...
. Vianu proposes that Theodorescu-Sion successfully fabricated himself the mentality of mountain dweller, with broken horizons and human figures seen from up close, with a somber palette that suggests "the coolness and secrecy one finds in a forest canopy." He notes: "one may document the nature of the man who created this painting style with his famous Self-portrait he exhibited [in 1925], where the protruding anatomy of his face, the unibrow, the one eye open and scanning, evoke in truth the very image of an ancestor from the mountains." Sion's polemic with urban life was becoming explicit. As historian Anca Gogîltan writes, one of his Peisaje ("Ladscapes"), dating ca. 1922, has "the delicate figure of a peasant woman showing up on the edge of a city, dominated by the modern city as a densely packed background, seemingly a screen of geometric shapes." Still lifes such as Roz şi roş, she notes, show that he catered to the public's growing interest in folk art items, depicting rustic plates or cruses; other works make note of the actual hierarchies of the rural space, showing women thoroughly involved in household chores such as laundering. As noted in 1931 by Broşteanu, there were three deep influences on Sion's still lifes and portraits: the antique ceramic art of Romania, alongside Derain's pictorial vision, and, "unmistakably" so, the post-Impressionist canvasses of Ştefan Luchian
Stefan Luchian
Ștefan Luchian or Lukian was a Romanian painter, famous for his landscapes and still life works.-Early life:He was born in Ștefănești, a village of Botoșani County, as the son of Major Dumitru Luchian and of Elena Chiriacescu. The Luchian family moved to Bucharest in 1873 and his mother desired...
.
According to his promoter Cisek, Theodorescu-Sion's organic treatment of nature emanates from "the fundamental law" of Romania's ancient folk arts, namely: "man does not master surrounding nature; he grows from the stony and craggy soil [...] like plants, like trees, like animals." This, Cisek argues, was the revelation of a true artistic expression of the Romanian soul, opposed to the idyllic canvasses of Impressionist master Nicolae Grigorescu
Nicolae Grigorescu
Nicolae Grigorescu was one of the founders of modern Romanian painting.-Biography:He was born in Pitaru, Dâmboviţa County, Wallachia. In 1843 the family moved to Bucharest. At a young age , he became an apprentice at the workshop of the painter Anton Chladek and created icons for the church of...
, but akin to the Poporanist prose of Calistrat Hogaş. In 1926, he assessed: "It has been said—and many among the artistically illiterate continue to repeat as much to this day—that only Grigorescu's art can ever be Romanian, and that Theodorescu-Sion's painting can have nothing in common with the substance of our soil. [...] tomorrow perhaps, [he] may find himself able to overturn skeptical impressions and theories". Cisek depicts Sion as Romania's "best connoisseur of artistic techniques", with a "sovereign mastery", locating him at the opposite end from post-Grigorescu official art. Sion's understanding of national specificity, he argues, had nothing in common with the "mulligan" traditionalism of Octav Băncilă
Octav Bancila
Octav Băncilă was a Romanian realist painter and left-wing activist. He was the brother of Sofia Nădejde, a feminist journalist, and the brother-in-law of Ion Nădejde .-Biography:...
and Kimon Loghi: "if Mr. Loghi is a painter, then Teodorescu-Sion must surely be something else entirely! One should bear in mind that Mr. Teodorescu-Sion is still developing, whereas 'Master' Loghi has reached his summit. The summit of mediocrity." Contrarily, Nichifor Crainic
Nichifor Crainic
Nichifor Crainic was a Romanian writer, editor, philosopher, poet and theologian famed for his traditionalist and antisemitic activities...
, who was a Grigorescu aficionado, posthumously described Sion as Grigorescu's one equal; however, he noted, Sion bowed to commissions, and as such never produced an actual masterpiece.
Vianu's friend and Gândirea contributor Lucian Blaga
Lucian Blaga
-Biography:Lucian Blaga was a commanding personality of the Romanian culture of the interbellum period. He was a philosopher and writer higly acclaimed for his originality, a university professor and a diplomat. He was born on May 9, 1895 in Lancrăm, near Alba Iulia, Romania, his father being an...
, a poet-philosopher on the search for Romanian specificity, applauded Theodorescu-Sion's paintings of "super-shepherds and super-peasants" in "Romanian landscapes", while, from another side of modern literature, Victor Eftimiu
Victor Eftimiu
Victor Eftimiu was an Albanian-Romanian poet, playwright, and a contributor to Sburătorul, a Romanian literary magazine. His works have been performed in the State Jewish Theater of Romania....
celebrated Sion as a "cultured" and "refined" figure among the traditionalists. Art reviewer Petru Comarnescu
Petru Comarnescu
Petru Comarnescu was a Romanian literary and art critic and translator.Born in Iași into a family that was related to the metropolitan bishop Veniamin Costache, he studied at the University of Bucharest law , philosophy and philology before going in 1931 on a two-year scholarship to the United...
also suggests that Theodorescu-Sion did in fact live up to the expectation of a purely Romanian art, by going back to the "naturalized Byzantine art
Byzantine art
Byzantine art is the term commonly used to describe the artistic products of the Byzantine Empire from about the 5th century until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453....
" of medieval muralists, particularly so in Şipotul. Although he constructs a similar argument, the religious commentator Crainic finds that Sion was less secure as a Christian artist, even though, he notes, Gândirea itself encouraged him to paint modern Romanian icons
Romanian icons
In the Romanian Orthodox Church, icons serve much the same purpose as they do in other Eastern Orthodox traditions. The art of painting them has survived communism and today there are many active icon painters in Romania....
.
The mixture of themes and the controversies surrounding Gândirist politics have also touched Sion's artistic contributions. In the 1920s, the artistic vision proposed by Sion and Ressu was being contested by the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
school of Contimporanul
Contimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
. Also inspired by primitive art, its leaders Ion Vinea and Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect, art theorist and cultural promoter, known as the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. His first contribution came in the 1910s, when he joined up with poets Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea...
refused to view the others as actual exponents of peasant traditions. The more radical experimenters, including Sion's student Jacques Hérold, rejected tame modernism altogether, turning to Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
; but young neo-traditionalists such as Elena Popea found in it a source of inspiration. Retrospectively, philosopher and curator Erwin Kessler finds in Sion the exponent of "a reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
Romanian modernism": artistic nationalism, coming at a time when all modern Romanian art was divided along ethnic lines ("the ethnic component of classical modernism played an important role, one that should be explained, not occulted"). Kessler additionally notes that there is a radical component to Sion's belief in the organic relationship of men and the soil, likening it to the main concepts of Romanian nationalism and traditionalism—from A. C. Cuza
A. C. Cuza
A. C. Cuza was a Romanian far right politician and theorist.-Early life:Born in Iaşi, after attending secondary school in his native city and in Dresden, Cuza studied law at the University of Paris, the Universität unter den Linden, and the Université Libre de Bruxelles...
's antisemitism to Virgil Madgearu
Virgil Madgearu
Virgil Traian N. Madgearu was a Romanian economist, sociologist, and left-wing politician, prominent member and main theorist of the Peasants' Party and of its successor, the National Peasants' Party...
's agrarianism, and passing through Blaga's theory on folk architecture. Also an antisemite, Crainic contended that Sion's art never made an impression on the art market, since the buyers were "mostly Jewish".
Various critics have noted that Sion's works of the 1920s and '30s are generally awkward, "scholastic", or geometrical and impersonal. The Meridiane study finds some of his works to be "emphatic", noting that Sion "does not reach into the philosophical meaning of folk mythology, retaining only its picturesque exterior."
Legacy
Ion Theodorescu-Sion's "premature death" was, according to critic I. Zărnescu, a moment of crisis for Romanian art: "[it] leaves an emptiness in our art, just when he, the man of support and encouragement, was most sorely needed." The painter received several tributes from his peers. Novelist Camil PetrescuCamil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu was a Romanian playwright, novelist, philosopher and poet. He marked the end of the traditional novel era and laid the foundation of the modern novel era.- Life :...
makes an oblique—and, Sorin Alexandrescu points out, chronologically inaccurate—mention of his urban landscapes in the 1933 novel Patul lui Procust; Alexandrescu believes that it serves to amplify the nostalgic mood in that particular fragment of the book. In addition to his self-portraits, Sion's likeness was preserved in a bust, the work of sculptor Corneliu Medrea (according to Nichifor Crainic, Medrea "wonderfully" captured the painter's proud demeanor and physical beauty). Medrea also designed Sion's crypt at Bellu cemetery.
Sion's fame declined with the years. His cultural legacy was in part preserved by his Gândirea colleagues, including those who later moved into far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
politics. After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and the establishment of Romania's communist regime
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...
, some of the latter were arrested, while others fled abroad. One of the latter was political journalist Pamfil Şeicaru, who even took some of Sion's paintings with him when he relocated to Francoist Spain. In 1972, Gândireas pro-fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
editor Crainic had been released from jail and, once rehabilitated
Rehabilitation (Soviet)
Rehabilitation in the context of the former Soviet Union, and the Post-Soviet states, was the restoration of a person who was criminally prosecuted without due basis, to the state of acquittal...
, was writing chronicles in Glasul Patriei, a communist magazine for the Romanian diaspora
Romanian diaspora
The Romanian diaspora is the ethnically Romanian population outside Romania and Moldova. The concept does not usually include the ethnic Romanians who live as natives in the states surrounding Romania, chiefly those Romanians who live in Ukraine and Serbia. The diaspora does include the people of...
. His article on Theodorescu-Sion was read and admired by Şeicaru, who wrote back to thank his former employer.
The National Museum of Art of Romania
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...
(MNAR) has a sizable Theodorescu-Sion collection. Much of it has been included in the Modern Romanian Art Gallery, reopened and rearranged by MNAR in 2001. Although long expected by critics, this new collection sparked debates: critic Gheorghe Vida found that Sion's presence, like that of other modern artists, was unjustly overshadowed by the inclusion of lesser, "second-shelf", painters of the interwar age. A 2006 donation of the Lola Schmierer Roth collection also supplemented MNAR's Theodorescu-Sion fund with works he had set aside for his former pupil. Other sizable Sion collections are held by the art museums of Constanţa
Constanta
Constanța is the oldest extant city in Romania, founded around 600 BC. The city is located in the Dobruja region of Romania, on the Black Sea coast. It is the capital of Constanța County and the largest city in the region....
and Tulcea
Tulcea
Tulcea is a city in Dobrogea, Romania. It is the administrative center of Tulcea county, and has a population of 92,379 as of 2007. One village, Tudor Vladimirescu, is administered by the city.- History :...
, and by 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...
in Bucharest.
Still emergent after the Romanian Revolution of 1989
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
, the Romanian art market was ambivalent in its treatment of Theodorescu-Sion's work. Writing in 2009, art critic Pavel Şuşară denounced "an unacceptable disagreement" between Sion's status as a "first-class artist" and the low starting prices of his canvasses, as opposed to the "exorbitant sums" fetched by painters such as Sabin Bălaşa
Sabin Balasa
Sabin Bălaşa was a contemporary Romanian painter. His works are described by himself as belonging to cosmic Romanticism.He completed his high school education at Frații Buzești High School in Craiova in 1950....
. That year, his Cele trei vârste ("The Three Ages") was sold for 32,000 lei
Romanian leu
The leu is the currency of Romania. It is subdivided into 100 bani . The name of the currency means "lion". On 1 July 2005, Romania underwent a currency reform, switching from the previous leu to a new leu . 1 RON is equal to 10,000 ROL...
. Interest in Theodorescu-Sion's work appears to have renewed itself by 2010, when the auctioned Sions fetched prices of the highest range.
The avant-garde's polemic with Sion's neo-traditionalism continues posthumously. In 2009, Erwin Kessler organized a collective show with the theme "Pork". Kessler explained that the pig, the staple food of modern Romania's consumerism
Consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen...
, stood to replace the sheep as the "totem
Totem
A totem is a stipulated ancestor of a group of people, such as a family, clan, group, lineage, or tribe.Totems support larger groups than the individual person. In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem...
" of Theodorescu-Sion and Nicolae Grigorescu. The tongue-in-cheek exhibit featured conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
works by Matei Bejenaru, Dumitru Gorzo, Ion Grigorescu
Ion Grigorescu
Ion Grigorescu is a Romanian painter, was one of the first Romanian conceptual artists and advocates of anti-art, postulating a radical consolidation of artistic activities with quotidian life...
, Dan Perjovschi
Dan Perjovschi
Dan Perjovschi is an artist, writer and cartoonist born in 1961 in Sibiu, Romania. Perjovschi has over the past decade created drawings in museum spaces, most recently in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in which he created the drawing during business hours for patrons to see. The drawings...
and various others.