'My Basarabia' at ArtSociety Gallery in Bucharest

An event occasioned by the near closure on August 2 of the 'My Basarabia' exhibition, an extensive incursion into the Basarabian fine arts between 1900 and 1970, represented by 22 artists, took place on Monday evening at the ArtSociety Gallery in Bucharest.

Publisher and poet Doina Uricariu pointed on this occasion to the 'combative force, sensitivity and the feeling of one's belonging to a certain world conveyed by the works on display.'

The writer deplored 'the separation of values after 1990 in Romania, which led to the separation of the cultural personalities of the two countries.'

'There are values on the other bank of the Prut too and ignoring them does not give us a higher position, either in life or in point of values,' said Doina Uricariu.

Academician Razvan Theodorescu revealed 'the European character of the Basarabian art and culture of the present and the past' and remarked the 'force of the new generation of artists in Basarabia and Romania.'

The exhibition is open in Romania over June 23-August 2 thanks to the private initiative of Ruxandra Garofeanu, art manager of the ArtSociety Gallery. The event is supported by the National Art Museum of the Republic of Moldova, by the National Art Museum of Romania, by the Bucharest Museum, by the Romanian Academy and by certain private collections.

'My Basarabia' is only a concise and very rigorous selection of the painting, sculpture and black-and-white drawing of some representatives of the Basarabian art so that the pieces that were selected should show the thematic specificity of that time on the one hand and, on the other hand, the synchronic character with the art processes of the European cultural space, such as art nouveaux, post-impressionism, symbolism, Mir Iskusstva, etc, as art historian Vladimir Bulat put it.

Quite interesting to see is the 'creative road and the changes it undergoes in the creation of some artists such as August Ballaiyre, Lazar Dubinovschi, Dumitru Sevastian, Moisei Gamburd, Sofia Cobizeva, Mihai Grecu a o,' says Bulat.

According to experts, such an extensive exhibition has not been organized in Bucharest since 1922, at the Romanian Athenaeum. The works that were bought then for the State Collection are practically the only ones that are still to be found in the public collections in Romania.

In the course of time some museums, libraries or archives came to own some documentary or plastic proofs of the Basarabian masters, but they are only accessible to a limited and well-informed number of viewers and the art collections of some scholars such as Gheorghe Bezviconi or Pan Halippa are dispersed, mostly lost, only the inventories still existing.

Agerpres