“Art is Feminine” is the exhibition with which Golești Museum welcomes the spring of 2023 and brings on the screens the feminine beauty, as it is rendered by well-known artists of the modern Romanian pen.

The grace, delicacy, elegance of the inner look and outer attitudes are rendered by a soft chromatic, through lights and shadows that emphasize the mystery of the eternal feminine.

The works in this exhibition are part of the collections of the Golești Museum and the Municipal Museum of Câmpulung, and are signed by important names of the plastic arts: Maria Pillat Brateș, Nicolae Grant, Margareta Gănescu, Ecaterina Cristescu-Delighioz, Elena Petraglu, Gheorghe Teodorescu Romanați, Ilie Burghele, Lazăr Ghelman and Vera Veslovschi Nițescu.

The exhibition will be on display in March and April 2023, from Monday to Sunday, 8.00-16.00.

ECATERINA DELIGHIOZ-CRISTESCU (1901-1973)

She was born in Tulcea. In 1919 and 1925 she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest, under the guidance of some of the great university professors of the interwar Romanian art education: Ipolit Strâmbu, G. D. Mirea, Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck, Dimitrie Serafim. She was particularly active in exhibitions at the official salons in Bucharest (1933-1946), being considered by specialists as an important representative of the female artistic movement in interwar Romania. Art critics have stated that her work illustrates a diverse oeuvre, populated by landscapes, static nature, but also representations of the anthropomorphic motifs, predominantly female.

ELENA PETRAGLU NICULESCU (1903 – 1975?)

Romanian artist, she was born in Bucharest. Her work is in line with the folkloric realism of the interwar period. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest, in the class of professors Camil Ressu, Jean Steriadi and Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck.

She made his debut in 1929, and throughout her career, held fourteen solo exhibitions. She also did book illustration.

GHEORGHE THEODORESCU-ROMANAȚI (1891-1980)

He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers were G.D.Mirea, Fr. Storck and Costin Petrescu. The young painter obtained, by exam, a chair of calligraphy and drawing in secondary education in Bucharest, which he kept until his retirement. The themes of his paintings are varied, painted in vivid tones and with a colouring that attracts the curiosity and interest of lovers of authentic art. The painter Gheorghe Teodorescu-Romanați, at the suggestion of the historian and scholar Nicolae Iorga, travelled, at his own expense, through the Romanian provinces, where he painted old houses, churches, monasteries, and faces of people from the past.

ILIE BURGHELE (1870-1937)

He was born on 8 July 1870 in Iași. After successfully graduating from the School of Fine Arts in the capital of Moldavia, he attended the Académie Julian in Paris. He was a teacher of drawing, calligraphy and gymnastics at a number of schools and high schools in Iași and Tecuci and an honorary member of the Iași Sports and Music Society. Ilie Burghele was above all a painter of genuine talent, the main themes he tackled were portraiture and landscape. He was considered by art critics as an accomplished colourist.

LAZAR GHELMAN (1887- 1976)

Romanian painter of Jewish origin, born in Galati. He studied in Germany and France. In 1923 he settled in Romania and exhibited constantly at the Official Salon until 1946. In 1963, 1967 and 1975 he opened solo exhibitions in Bucharest. He painted portraits of Romanian cultural and scientific personalities, including actors George Storin and Alexandru Giugaru, professors Constantin I. Parhon and Petre Constantinescu-Iași, maintaining the classical concept of portrait creation. The technique that defines his style and is most often used is pastel.

MARIA PILLAT-BRATEȘ (1892-1975)

She studied painting and drawing with the masters Costin Petrescu and Jean Steriadi. In 1915 she married the poet Ion Pillat. At the suggestion of Jean Steriade, she made her debut in 1914 at the Salonul Tinerimii Artistice, under the pseudonym I. Brateș. She took part in group and individual exhibitions, in the country and abroad, being particularly appreciated by the critics of the time.

Victim of communist persecution, she was arrested and then forced to live at home between 1949-1954, and Maria Pillat-Brateș was not allowed to exhibit her work. It was only in 2006, after an absence of 58 years from the exhibitions halls, that the retrospective hosted by the Dialog Gallery at the City Hall of Sector 2 brought her works back to the public.

NICOLAE GRANT (1868-1950)

Nicolae Grant was born on 21 April/9 May 1868, in the Belvedere mansion in Bucharest, which belonged to his great-grandfather on his mother’s side, the great logger Constantin (Dinicu) Golescu (1777-1830. He studied in France, where Nicolae Grant left in the summer of 1885, his mentor being the master Jean-Léon Gérome (1824-1904).

At the age of 18, Nicolae Grant exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Artistes Françaises in Paris. In 1893 he exhibited several canvases at the Romanian Athenaeum. The works produced during the 20 years he spent in France will include Nicolae Grant in “the ranks of the most important travelling painters known to the history of Romanian art”.

He painted numerous landscapes, flowers, static nature, oriental interiors, bohemian interiors, but he also did composition painting, or large murals. In his long artistic career, spanning over 50 years, he painted over 1000 paintings (drawings, watercolours, gouaches, tempera and oils).

STELA GĂNESCU

The artist was born in Ciucul Mare in Brasov County, in 1914. She studied painting and ceramics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest. Initially she worked as a teacher in secondary schools. After the end of the Second World War, Stella Gănescu’s career developed spectacularly, with the artist participating in many international exhibitions. Her works can be found in the collections of museums in Sibiu, Bucharest, Galati, Mexico, as well as in the Golești Museum.

VERA VESLOVSCHI-NIȚESCU (1901-1974)

The Romanian painter Vera Veslovski was born in Câmpulung-Moldovenesc, studied in Brno between 1915 and 1916, then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest, then in Paris. Back in the country she continued her work in Craiova (1926-1929), then in Bucharest (1929-1974). Her painting was a flash of light, reflected at times on her native Bucovina and at others on the freshness of human age, in a perfect harmony of nuances.