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10. Two Friends [anii '20]

Nadia Grossman-Bulighin

1891, Basarabia - 1930, Câmpulung Muscel

Estimate

EUR 3.500 - 5.500

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Session

Thu, 18 June 2026 19:00

Nadia Grossman-Bulighin holds a unique position in the Romanian interwar artistic landscape, precisely through her training, which unfolded in two seemingly incompatible stages that became complementary in her mature work. The years spent in Saint Petersburg, in the studio of Ivan Bilibin, provided her with a rigorous structure, specific simplification of Russian art, and a profound sensitivity towards folklore and tradition. The Parisian sojourn was decisive: there, she came in contact with cubism - a movement that, by fragmenting form, representing multiple viewpoints simultaneously and reducing the plastic vocabulary to pure geometry, proposed an entirely different understanding of visible reality. Back in her homeland, the artist approached the avant-garde circles of Bucharest, working for a while alongside Ipolit Strâmbu and even participating in the exhibition of the Academy of Decorative Arts organized by M.H. Maxy in 1926. Unlike Maxy, whose constructions tend towards abstraction and formal activism, or Tonitza, whose sensitivity remains anchored in figurative lyricism, the artist finds a third way: the cubist form serving the portrait and genre scene, with a gravity of drawing and dramatic rhythm of surfaces, recognizable in works such as "Reading or Portrait of a Friend". In the '30s, this synthesis consecrated her as one of the most coherent voices of traditionalist modernism - one of the paradoxes of Romanian visual arts. The work in question is a front-to-back composition, the two portraits articulating, beyond a possible kinship between the characters, a deeper meditation on time and human condition. On the front, a little girl tightly holds a teddy bear to her chest and looks directly at the observer, vulnerable, with all her future ahead. On the back, a middle-aged man supports his hands on a cane and turns his gaze slightly sideways, maintaining a more withdrawn attitude, anchored in experience and the weight of accumulated years. The opposition is carefully constructed: innocence versus maturity, openness versus restraint, teddy bear versus cane. In the way the portraits are executed, traits typical of Nadia Grossman-Bulighin’s synthetic cubism are observed, confirming the coherence of a mature, personal and immediately recognizable plastic language. (L.M)

References

Monica ENACHE, "Equal. Art and Feminism in Modern Romania", The National Museum of Art of Romania, Bucharest, 2016. "Nadia Bulighin Grossman", Romanian painters from Argeș, Hearth of Heritage Makers and Creators, 2023. Ionel JIANU, "A Conversation with Nadia Bulighin" in "Rampa", year XIII, March 9, 1928 Adrian MANIU, "Nadia Bulighin: A New Painter and Some Beautiful Books" in "The Ramp", year XIII, February 26, 1928.

Dimensions

width 59 cm, height 79 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed on the back, bottom right, in black, "N.G.B."

Dating

anii '20

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

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