George Löwendal – My meetings with peasants

Location: Blue House, Multimedia Hall
Duration: 16.06– 31.07.2015
Opening: Tuesday, June 16, 2:00 pm
Organizer: Löwendal Foundation
Curators:  professor Ruxandra Demetrescu, Cristina Cojocaru (Löwendal Foundation), Maria Barna (Brukenthal National Museum)
Parteners: Domeniul Manasia, UNArte şi Editura UNArte, Artmark, Artindex
Media parteners: Agerpres and Art Act Magazine

Text from the exhibition curator from sources provided by the Löwendal Foundation:

57 paintings and graphics represent the basis of a unique portrait gallery in the modern Romanian painting. They were realized by Baron George Löwendal, who surprised, with tenacity, love and respect, images of peasants from different areas of the country: the teacher, the merry man, the woodman, the seller of seeds, the mayor`s daughter, the beggar. He met them in the twilight of a civilization about to be lost in modern times, so he conciously undertook the task to visually record the Romanian peasant’s soul, countenance and traditional clothing. The works were completed during three decades (1933-1963) and many of them are accompanied, for the first time in Sibiu, by fragments from the artist notes. Together, images and texts give us the dimenssion of an “ethnographer” painter, who steadly documented images in his adoptive country, Romania.

Baron George Löwendal was born in 1897 in St. Petersburg, in a noble family with Danish-Russian origins. He studied in avant-garde Russia, emerged as a decorator painter in Bucharest and was designer of the National Theatre in Chernivtsi for nearly a decade. Here he created the first professional puppet theater in those time Romania. He supported the theatricalization movement in theater; he was close collaborator of the most important Romanian directors, arousing admiration of critics and artists of his time. Simultaneously he stated as a painter, illustrator, teacher and master of the first generation of postwar artists in Romania.
Löwendal Foundation aims to promote George Löwendal`s work as painter and scenographer, to initiate and organize curatorial, publishing and education projects in the fields of visual and performing arts, to support and encourage contemporary art. Every year, the Foundation organizes the National Competition of Stage Design “George Löwendal”, a unique project in Romania and exclusive brand of Löwendal Foundation. More details: http://www.lowendal.ro/, www.facebook.com/lowendalfoundation.