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#A true balm for the soul.
That is the feeling that a visitors feels while leaving the Art Museum of Craiova.
Placed in the vibrant heart of the city centre, this fairy tale like building seems the perfect setting for a Walt Disney movie just as much as the most famous Castle of Neuschwanstein that inspired the company’s logo.
Built between 1898 and 1907 to be the residence of one of the richest family in Romania, the Costantin Mihail palace is full of baroque wonders: the visitor gets lost in the rooms filled with mirrors that creates illusionist reflections, stuccos and frescoes, Murano glasses and refined decorations.
The stairs, made of Carrara marble, are the link between the entrance and the collection of the Museum, sober and majestic at the same time.
Step by step, the noise of foot appeased by the red and golden tissue of the carpets, the spectators reach the upper part of the palace, with large rooms opening on an oval balcony.
In this enchanted place are preserved works of Romanian artists such as Nicolae Tonitza, Constantin Lecca Gheorghe Tattarescu and many other masters and, in a precious room that an attendant of the Museum opens just before the spectator reaches the exit, the precious, early works of Constantin Brancuşi.
The great master, one of the most important protagonists in the art of the 20th century, spent the years of his early formation in Craiova, led in this city from his hometown in the Carpathians by his impressive talent in carving wood, which was evident because the young artist used to create tools for the house and other items using this material.
During these years he attended the Craiova School of Arts and Crafts, before enrolling in Bucharest School of Fine Arts, before his departure, that signed the beginning of an adventure that, passing from Munchen, brought him to Paris, the city chosen by his heart to be his home and workplace for the rest of his life.
The cabinet dedicated to Brancuşi comprises six works, from the more academic exercise of écorché to studies of heads that are still quite traditional but presents already a sign of that ‘non finito’ that was one of the most striking characteristics of Michelangelo’s work and that became the key world that describes the artworks born between the Modernity and the Contemporary, for instance in sculptures like the ones of Medardo Rosso, in which the figurative slowly shifts in abstraction.
But is with the first edition of ‘The Kiss’ (1907), that the visitor’s heart reaches heaven.
Sculpted in stone, it represents a love so deep that the shapes of the two lovers are almost melted in one cubic block, essential and expressive, small and incredibly strong.
In ‘The tight’ we can see a reflection of the works of the maturity in the softness of the lines and the fragmentation of the body whose shape resembles that of Brancuşi’s famous heads : the natural forms are sublimated through a process of abstraction and becomes pure shapes, minimal but still organic, a magic that only an artist like the Romanian artist can achieve.
The same characteristics of non finished can be found also in the evocative works of Corneliu Baba, whose artworks are situated in a suggestive room in which we find also a table with the artist’s instruments, and in the Impressionist landscapes of other artists, whose work is deeply influenced by the French movement, as we can see in the works of Nicolae Grigorescu, characterized by quick, thick brushstrokes.
Between the beautiful artworks hosted by the Museum, stands out the one of Ion Ţuculescu.
The painter uses a palette of bright colors, strong as his peculiar language of signs that is tipically expressionist and, in his skillful hands, becomes the link between what we can see and what we cannot see, mixing the visible with the invisible, the world of those cells and microorganisms that he, being a biologist, knew so well.
This, as for Klimt, happens through the interaction of figurative elements with geometrical ones, as we can see in the self portrait comprised in the collection (Self portrait on an Autumn leaf).
Last but not the least, the charming collection of traditional icons depicting the Virgin, Christ and the Saints.
While you visit this place, lost in admiration, your eyes could suddenly catch something white.It’s the shiny dress of a bride, went to the Museum to be photographed in this special setting.
