The first Art Safari exhibition season of 2023 will bring together four exhibitions, two of Romanian art and two others that present works proposed by French and Spanish partners, and it will be open between Friday, February 10 until May 14, at the Dacia-Romania Palace (Bucharest City Museum).
“We have four exhibitions, contemporary art from France, contemporary art from Romania, heritage art from Romania and heritage art from Spain,” said the head of the Bucharest Art Pavilion – Art Safari, Ioana Ciocan, at the press conference where they announced the event.
She mentioned the retrospective dedicated to painter Ion Theodorescu-Sion (1882-1939), “Masters of Spanish Painting,” “The Memory Palace. Focus on the French art scene with the Marcel Duchamp Prize” and the exhibition “Young Blood 2.0.”
The manager of the Bucharest City Museum, Adrian Majuru, PhD, welcomed the opening of the new Art Safari season, “a story that continues,” appreciating that “Bucharest needs a cultural dynamic, which gathers together, in a platform (…) various demographics and various ages.”
“Art Safari has the dynamics that the West discovered a few decades ago and it is very well represented, especially with contemporary art being shown next two works of art that already belong to the national and world heritage. And I mean now especially those museums that have a university behind them, such as the universities of applied arts or fine arts in other European cities. We do not have such a university, we have departments, and the Pinacoteca [Bucharest Art Gallery – editor’s note], which will be in this residence, hopefully, in the next five years, it will capitalize on the applied arts in the way it will value the collection of the Pinacoteca, which, along with paintings and sculptures, also has some interesting pieces of decorative art,” said Adrian Majuru, according to Agerpres.
The ambassadors of France and Spain in Romania, Laurence Auer and Jose Antonio Hernandez Perez-Solorzano, expressed their satisfaction over the presence in Bucharest of some of the leading representatives of art from the countries they represent.
“This building has had a very strong history with France and I am happy and proud to be here with this contemporary art exhibition. It is about Marcel Duchamp, a very well-known artist in Romania. The curator of the exhibition, Daria de Beauvais, will explain to you that it is not only about French artists, but representative painters for international contemporary art, such as Mircea Cantor, a very beloved contemporary Romanian artist, the only Romanian who won this award,” said the French diplomat.
“Masters of Spanish painting – 19th century and the emergence of Impressionism” exhibition includes about a hundred work
Participating in the inauguration of the eleventh edition of the exhibition “Art Safari”, which will remain open to the public at the Dacia Palace in Bucharest from February 10 until May 14, the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Spain in Romania, José Antonio Hernández Pérez-Solórzano, stated: “Through this exhibition, the strengthening of the cultural ties between Romania and Spain is desired, as well as promoting the image of one Spain that combines tradition and modernity, the past and the future, the ephemeral and the perpetuum, image depicted so successfully by the Spanish Impressionist masters”.
Entitled “Masters of Spanish painting – 19th century and the emergence of Impressionism”, the exhibition includes about a hundred works, including some remarkable works by the painter Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923), as well as other prominent Spanish artists of this era, such as Mariano Fortuny, Ignacio Zuloaga, Raimundo de Madrazo, Francisco Miralles, Ramón Martí Alsina, Joaquín Agrasot, Federico de Madrazo, and the list does not stop here.
The curator of the exhibition, Helena Alonso, wanted to convey the Impressionist movement’s own tendencies, respectively Orientalism and Illuminism, reflected by the light of the Mediterranean, and which served to promote Spain through artists who played an important role in 19th century, one of the most vibrant periods of European painting.
Art Safari takes place under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture and is being organized in partnership with the Bucharest City Museum, the National Art Museum of Romania and the Romanian Cultural Institute, with BCR (Romanian Commercial Bank) as an official partner. In the 10 editions so far, it has registered over 350,000 visitors.
