STARTING DECEMBER 2019
THEMATIC EXHIBITION AT THE SUȚU PALACE
TATTARESCU – PERSPECTIVE STUDIES
On December 6th 2019, the Suțu Palace will open a new thematic exhibition. Anticipating the reopening of the Ghoerghe Tattarescu Memorial Museum – inside the artist’s house on 7 Domnița Anastasia Street, featuring the painter’s major works of art (1820 – 1894) – and the upcoming celebration of his birth bicentenary, the Bucharest Municipality Museum is preparing an exhibition of “niche” drawings which are unknown or little known even to specialists.
Amateurs and specialists alike will be invited to explore a special visual segment in the artist’s biography, a segment which took place during his studies at San Luca Academy in Rome, Italy (1845 – 1851), where he learned painting with Natale Carta and Giovanni Silvagni, and perspective with Pietro Gagliardi.
“Tattarescu – Perspective Studies” will offer the public a display of drawings focused on the study of perspective and created in the artist’s private studio as practice, together with a few other artistic drawings which easily show the way he used this science – as depicted in his sketches/compositions which set the base of some of his well-known paintings (“Romania’s Renaissance”, “The Danube Peasant”, “Simon and Levy”).
As precursors of painting, the genre which established his name, these drawings are true lectures on rendering 3D objects in a 2D plane, and were never meant for public exhibitions. The rigor of execution and the plasticity of these apparently technical drawings, are, we believe, capable of surpassing their purpose as simple instruments of Tattarescu’s skill honing.
We can assert that, through their historic value, these drawings have become standalone works of art and valuable testimonies for capitalizing patrimony and for researching the history of art education at the time.
After finishing his studies, most of his artistic activity was dedicated to religious art, which he developed in his own personal style, a mix between Italian academism and byzantine iconographic tradition, a style which established him as the most important modern mural painter in our country.
On the other hand, the patriotic character of his easel paintings created during the 1848 Revolution and their visual impact on later generations (“Romania’s Renaissance” or “The Portrait of N. Bălcescu”), his socio-political involvement in founding, together with Theodor Aman, the School of Belle-Arte in Bucharest and his teaching career, complete the famous portrait of the artist.
Through the exhibition “Tattarescu – Perspective studies”, the Bucharest Municipality Museum completes this portrait and reveals a part of the diligent young Gheorghe Tattarescu.
Rodica Ion, museologist
“Gheorghe Tattarescu” Memorial Museum