120. Afizé [1934-1935]

Nicolae Tonitza

1886, Bârlad - 1940, Bucureşti

Estimate

EUR 40.000 - 60.000

Sold

EUR 85.000

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Session

Tue, 22 March 2022 19:00

The Balkan of the 1930s was to provide Tonitza with endless subjects of inspiration, its intimate and picturesque beauty serving as the pillars of his perfect harmonisation of colour and form, creating compositions and landscapes in luminous harmony. A colourist without equal and a skilful wielder of line, the artist begins his work at dawn, when the light is in its full state and everything appears clear to him. The vivid grace of line, form and palette creates a fresh painting, achieved through unlimited plastic values of expression. Together with the balance of the construction, the artist will consider the careful examination of the surrounding nature as the most reliable initiation of the creative act, and colour, the accurate mirror of the basic feeling of any pictorial action. The colouring of his palette, made of only a few fundamental colours, is revived by the artist working in the sense of nature. Arriving in 1933 in the small town of Dobrogea, where a year earlier his good friend Stefan Dimitrescu (Fănuță) had been, Tonitza would recall with suspicion the latter's wanderings, going through the same places he had passed through, wandering through the hidden courtyards, shady paths and hot cliffs, discovering a land full of revelations. He will be impressed by the spirit of the place, the roofs, the courtyards, the streets, the early mornings, the sunny afternoons and the small communities of Turks and Tartars, with whom he will make friends. His residences in Balchik will be the Hagi Skendel House, the Ismail Café, the house on I.C. Brătianu no. 2, the house of the Port Authority and the house of Ismail Ebuleis Feyzula. Among the models remembered by the artist will be Ismail Ebuleis Feyzula and his daughter Lufitie, Ali Mehmet, Rachiș Ali, pie maker Asim Selim, the beautiful Demirna, Hamide, Esba, Gurli, Cadie or Afize, as well as the small troupe of Tartar girls - Gurli Ali Pelivan, Rakiș Ali, Nezibe, Afize. In a letter to the collector Lehrman, sent from the Ismail café, where he used to write his correspondence, the artist confessed his joy at having formed in the summer of 1934 a team of five or six Turkish girls who came to pose for him regularly. In the following years we will meet them in the exhibitions "Group of Four" (1935), as well as in the Salon of Drawing and Graphics (1936). (G.M.)

References

COMARNESCU, Petru, "N. N. Tonitza", Tineretului Publishing House, Bucharest, 1962. Catalogue of the exhibition "N. N. Tonitza", The R.P.R. Art Museum, Bucharest, January-March 1964. BREZIANU, Barbu, "Tonitza", Publishing House of the Socialist Republic of Romania, Bucharest, 1967. ȘORBAN, Raoul, "Tonitza", Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1973. TONITZA, N. N., "Corespondență. 1906-1939" ("Correspondence. 1906-1939"), Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1978.

Dimensions

width 29 cm, height 39.5 cm, custom 39,5 Ã 29 cm

Description

oil on cardboard, signed upper right, with brown, "Tonitza"

Research information

The artwork is mentioned and reproduced in the catalogue of the retrospective exhibition "N.N.Tonitza", The R.P.R. Art Museum, Bucharest, 1964, cat. 36, p. 137, under the title "TÄtÄroaicÄ citind" ("Tatar Woman Reading").

Dating

1934-1935

PROVENANCE

the historical collection Dr. Ètefan T.

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