Editura LiterNet, 2002

 ARTE DIVINA

Editor: Rzvan Penescu rpenescu@liternet.ro

Editor pdf Acrobat Reader: Iulia Cojocariu icojocariu@liternet.ro

Copyright: 2002 qual-comm, Bucharest (Graphic designer : Corina Duma, Photos : Corina Olaru, Nicu Ilfoveanu,
Text : Oana Tnase)
All rights reserved.

2002 Editura LiterNet for the pdf version.

 
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ISBN : 973-85739-5-5

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The Friends of the National Museum of Art of Romania is a non-profit association registered in Romania, which goal is
to raise funds to develop the National Museum of Art of Romania and to provide practical help in bringing it and its
five satellite museums up to world class standards.
Our association is a member of the World Federation of Friends of Museums.
 I am pleased to feature this benefit exhibition, as a unique showcase for exceptional Romanian art. ARTE DIVINA is an
ideal venue for refined audiences, to experience a wide range of developments in contemporary art, to share insights
of both young and well known collectors and also- within the span of an enjoyable setting- to learn what they need to
know about selecting and buying the best of new Romanian contemporary art.

Artists represented in the exhibition and auction, include internationally renowned artists, such as: Nicolae Alexi,
Aurel Bulacu, Stefan Clia, and Sorin Ilfoveanu, Stela Lie, Mihai Mnescu, alongside some of the most dynamic
 emerging personalities. The panoply involves mid career contemporary artists (in their fifties), as well as young artists 
in their twenties and thirties. My selection was based both on the quality of their works, as well as on the idea that the
lure of collecting contemporary art, often transposes one as an intrinsic beat, within the pulse of modern times.

Oana Tnase

Oana Tnase is an art critic, editorial assistant of ARTA magazine, and the curator of deINTERESE Gallery
 | ARTE DIVINA 1/22 |

Nicolae Alexi
 
(Couple. Paper people, pen
drawing, 55x74 cm, 1996)

Nicolae Alexi is a professor at the Graphic Department of The University of Arts in Bucharest. He has participated in
graphic design exhibitions and group exhibitions in Romania and to international events in Rotterdam, Moscow, Sao
Paolo, and Dubai.
The beauty of the freakish line, which describes an ever-changing world, fascinates Alexi, who has perfect drawing ability.
The pleasure for detail does not deviate towards the aesthetic baroque; its beauty lies in its simplicity and the collision of
epochs represents a quotation method that is both playful and profound.
 | ARTE DIVINA 2/22 |

Anca Benera
 
(Shadow, mixed media, 110x90 cm, 2000)

Anca Benera graduated from the Painting

Department of The University of Arts in
Bucharest, in the year 2001. She participated in
painting and installation group events in
Romania.

The exotic color work entitled Shadow has its

point of departure in her own childhood dream
about a Stone Land where the contours and the
geographic areas are dissolved by intense light.
 | ARTE DIVINA 3/22 |

Anca Boeriu
 
(Couple, aquaforte,
AP, 50x65 cm, 2000)

Anca Boeriu graduated from the Graphic Department of The University of Arts in 1982. She has participated in
several group shows in Romania and abroad. She has also held personal shows in Bucharest, Timisoara, and Basel.

Her works demonstrate the existence of a well-developed feminist consciousness; the work presented here
Couple is of special interest for her skilful drawing and ingenious scenery.
 | ARTE DIVINA 4/22 |

Irina Bucan Botea

 
(Tasio, oil on canvas, 105x58 cm, 2001)

Irina Bucan Botea graduated from the Painting

Department of The University of Arts in
Bucharest, in year 2001, with an MA degree in
2002. She has held personal exhibitions in
Bucharest and she has taken part in group
shows in Romania, Germany, Norway, Bulgaria
and Turkey.

As a figurative painter, she plays upon the

border between the real and the fantastic,
sensual world. The characters in her paintings
are depicted in a manner that suggests the
photographic technique.
 | ARTE DIVINA 5/22 |

Aurel Bulacu
 

(Untitled, mixed media,

48x68 cm, 2002)

Well-known for his world of bestiaries, expressing a private mythology, Aurel Bulacu is a pictorial drawer. He is the
director of the Nicolae Tonitza Art High School in Bucharest. Since 1973 he has participated in international shows
and biennials, where he has been awarded prizes for engraving.

His main artistic strategies the disappearing face, the mask, the fragment, the melting- represent oversized
details of human and animal anatomy as an original way to describe the pilgrimage of mankind on the path to its
identity. In his recent works, the artist draws upon earlier motifs, such as the visually aggressive feminine torso with
its raw tactile quality.
 | ARTE DIVINA 6/22 |

tefan Clia
 
(Alchemy 9, mixed media, 84x64 cm, 2002)

tefan Clias spirit is nourished by Transylvania,

where he was born in 1942, within the span of a
large European collective mythology. His works
belong to private and public collections all over
the world. Clia is a professor at the Painting
Department of The University of Arts in Bucharest.

Both in paintings and drawings, Clia invents

generous series of mysterious signs in order to
point out the structural duplicity of a composite
universe. His fantastic characters have their place
in a giant procession, among Boschs and
Brueghels visual art, or Kafkas and Meyrincks
literary genre. In this recent work from the
Alchemy series, we recognize the labyrinth-like
style, and one of his main motifs, the fish,
expressed via a pen drawing, is so very fine, as it
almost compares to filigree or calligraphic writing.
 | ARTE DIVINA 7/22 |

Suzana Dan
 

(Landscape with Men, oil on canvas, 100x100

cm, 1999)

Suzana Dan has graduated from the

Painting Department of The University of
Arts in Bucharest in 2001, the year when
she also performed her first solo show,
well appreciated by art critics. As a
figurative painter, she deals with
postmodernist quotation, an innovative,
fruitful manipulation of visual forms.

In her trans-avant-garde strategy, she

resuscitates a violent chromatics, a taste
of over-sizing gesture and of large-scale
canvas, a concern for frugal
figurativeness. Hazard, irony, and play are
defining words for her imagery.
 | ARTE DIVINA 8/22 |

Eugen Dornescu
 
(The Sacrifice III,
mixed media, 40x50
cm, 1995)

Eugen Dornescu graduated from Painting Department of the Academy of Arts in Iai, in the year 1981. He has
participated in numerous group shows in Romania and abroad. He is now living in Sibiu.

The armour of an invisible hero offers us in the presented work a metaphor of a sacrifice.
 | ARTE DIVINA 9/22 |

Adriana Elian
 
(The Nostalgia,
oil on canvas,
40x80 cm,
2002)

Adriana Elian graduated from the Painting Department of The Academy of Arts in Cluj, in the year 1991.

For Elian, the act of painting is an accurate ceremony. Interested by the prospective gaze, she plays upon the
disappearing of the image, transposing it into a luminescent seductive surface.
 | ARTE DIVINA 10/22 |

Eugen Gustea
 
(Untitled, aquaforte and dry point, 4/10 24, 5x20
cm, 1997)

Eugen Gustea graduated from the Graphic

Department of The University of Arts in
Bucharest and he is now an assisting professor
at the Graphic Department of The University of
Arts in Bucharest. His works cover advertising,
book illustrations and photography.

The work presented here testifies to his fantasy

and his interest for tensioned, strange
sequences of a world cut from A Knights Tale.
 | ARTE DIVINA 11/22 |

Stela Lie
 
(Pink Cliff &
Landscape,
mixed media,
70x74 cm, 1994)

She graduated from the Graphic Department of The University of Arts in Bucharest, in the year 1999, where she is
now an assistant professor. Since then she has participated in several graphic exhibitions and workshops both in
Romania and abroad.

Her works combine graphic and pictorial qualities, reminding us of the German spirit and folk art influences and
express her tenderness and poetic thrill. The honey of your lips represents the words of a transparent substance
of these synthetic landscape compositions from Balcic, an enjoyable place, known to have delighted generations of
Romanian and international artists.
 | ARTE DIVINA 12/22 |

Sorin Ilfoveanu
 
(Fragment from 'Fric',
mixed media, 49x78
cm, 2000)

Sorin Ilfoveanu is the Dean of the Painting Department of The University of Arts in Bucharest. He is inhabited by a
lyric spirit, with a well defined visual discourse. His narrative color drawings are at the midst of a private mythology,
rooted in the folk culture. His works have the privilege to belong in private and public collections from all over the
world.
In his most recent works, he has chosen the writings of a well-known Romanian poet, Stefan Agopian, as a point of
departure. The drawing exhibited here, offers us a fragment of an yet unpublished novel, Fric. In this light,
Ilfoveanus subtle drawings do not only represent the illustrations of an ingenious book, but also the core of an
episode of creative writing.
 | ARTE DIVINA 13/22 |

Mihai Mnescu
 
(Early morning & Danube Delta, pastel, 52x57
cm, 2002)

A professor at The University of Arts in

Bucharest since 1990, Mihai Mnescu holds a
PhD in The Aesthetic of Visual Arts. Since
1968, he has participated in important events
and exhibitions abroad. His works cover various
art areas such as advertising, posters, book
illustrations, photography, and painting.

Preserving modernist structures, hierarchy and

finality, betting on the semantics and
transcendence of image, his works create a new
vision.
 | ARTE DIVINA 14/22 |

Corneliu Mihai
 

(Untitled, mixed
media, 110x60 cm,
2002)

Corneliu Mihai is from Braov. He graduated from Graphic Department of the University of Arts in Bucharest. Since
1978 he has participated in Romanian and international drawing exhibitions. His works are in private and public
collections in Poland, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, and Germany.

In recent works he seems interested in subtle color sequences resembling precious metal book framing.
 | ARTE DIVINA 15/22 |

Luminia Mihai
 
(Belly ake, oil on
cardboard, 70x100 cm,
2000)

Luminia Mihai graduated from the Painting Department of The University of Arts in Bucharest, in the year 2001.
She has participated in group exhibitions in Romania, Italy and Bulgaria.

The work presented here expresses her qualities of figurative studies in paintings or drawings, after living model.
She uses the chromatic force, as a particular manner to underline the characters movements and state of mind.
 | ARTE DIVINA 16/22 |

Gili Mocanu
 
(CO I & CO II, ink on cardboard, 70x100 cm & 100x70 cm, 1994)
Gili Mocanu graduated from the Graphic Department of The
University of Arts in Bucharest, in 1999, and with an MA degree in
the year 2000. Since 1994, he has held several group exhibitions in
Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, France and Lebanon.
Gili Mocanu manipulates neo-conceptualism and neo-minimalism
syntheses into visual poetics, wavering between originality and
pastiche, austerity and parody. A skilful drawer, Gili Mocanu deals
with subversion, indeterminacy, deconstruction and melting layers
of sense.
 | ARTE DIVINA 17/22 |

Alexandru Rdvan
 
(Solomon and Sulamita, mixed media, 125x85 cm,
2002)

Alexandru Rdvan graduated from the Painting

Department of The University of Arts in
Bucharest in the year 2000, and with an MA
degree in 2001.

The heroic and mythological world offered him a

humanist, timeless model for his subjectivity.
Of special interest for his aesthetic view is the
series from the Old Testament, where Solomon
and Sulamita chant belongs. Pointing out
notions such as self-expressions, identity,
ego, Alexandru Rdvan is one of the promising
artists of the new generation.
 | ARTE DIVINA 18/22 |

Florin Stoiciu
 
(Mask, aquaforte, AP 44x32 cm, 2002)

Florin Stoiciu graduated from the Graphic

Department of The University of Arts in
Bucharest in 1992, and he is now an assisting
professor at the same Department. Since then,
he has taken part in personal and group shows
in Romania, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, and
France.

The bibliophile editions, along with topics

chosen from Shakespeares Sonnets, as well as
his mythology presented in visual signs,
represent his most distinctive features.
 | ARTE DIVINA 19/22 |

Roman Tolici
 
(Child, mixed media, 100x70 cm, 2000)

Roman Tolici graduated from the Painting

Department of The University of Arts in
Bucharest, in 1999. He took part in group shows
in Romania and abroad. His works cover
advertising, photography and comics.

He has the force to persuade us through the

neo-expressionist way to manipulate
contemporary imagery. His visual field is defined
by a sense of parody, but also by a profound
taste for an alienating world.
 | ARTE DIVINA 20/22 |

George Vasilache
 
(My Love: Intense
Confusion Field, tempera
on cardboard, 41x68 cm,
2000)

George Vasilache graduated from the Graphic Department of The University of Arts in Bucharest, in the year 2000
and since then he has participated in group shows in Bucharest, Rome and Copenhagen.

Considered an abstract artist, George Vasilaches works are richly colored compositions; each of them displays a
brilliant confusion of ornamental detail that does not simply embellish the art, but becomes its content. The series
of works entitled My Love: Intense Confusion Field evoke a dreamlike, floating state, in which fantasy liquefies the
world, tinting and bending to its own desires.
 | ARTE DIVINA 21/22 |

Iuliana Vlsan
 
(La vie en rose I & La vie en rose II, acrylic on
canvas, 152x80 cm, 2000)

Iuliana Vlsan graduated from the

Department of Literature of The
University of Bucharest, in the year 1995
and from the Painting Department of The
University of Arts, in the year 2000. She
has participated in several workshops in
Romania and abroad (Italy, Germany, and
Denmark) and since 1995 she has
realized the stage design for most of the
Mihai Mniuius theater productions.

Her ingenious figurative and abstract

scenery opens up to some eternal
questions regarding intimacy, memory
and trust. The two works entitled La Vie
en Rose represent the existential
experience of the Limit which is
transposed in visual sign.
 | ARTE DIVINA 22/22 |

Ana Wagner
 

(Where are you going, wood cut, 4/4, 80x40 cm, 2002)

Ana Wagner graduated from the Graphic Department

of The University of Arts in Bucharest, in the year
2000. She has performed various internships and
study visits on woodcut in Venice, Budapest and
Salonic (Neapolis Center of Engraving).

The piece Where are you going? belongs to a

generous series entitled The Cat in the City,
representing images of a journey from a serene city.
The energy for details, and her gift to create space
and surprise to a story call for the artists inner self.