The Aesthetics of the Nude

38 works by leading Romanian artists at the MNAC in Bucharest

Thirty-eight drawings and etchings realized by some of the most important Romanian artists of the first half of the twentieth century are on display at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Bucharest until March 31. The exhibition Aesthetics of the Nude will be open for the public at the Museum’s Gallery of Modern Romanian Art until the end of November.

The nude human body as a theme has been one of the major subjects of painting and sculpture in the 20th century. Constantin Brâncuşi’s famous work The Nude is positioned in the very centre of this exhibition, as it is considered the leading key of the stylistic directions pioneered by Brancusi in Romanian art.

Drawings by Milita Petrascu and the Romanian avant-garde group –Max Herman Maxy, Marcel Iancu, Hans Mattis Teutsch, Corneliu Mihailescu– are also on display next to works by interwar painters, such as Gheorghe Petrascu, Theodor Pallady, Iosif Iser, Nicolae Tonitza. Drawings made by sculptors Dimitrie Paciurea, Ion Irimescu, George Apostu and by painter Corneliu Baba complete the historical review of this theme in the Romanian graphic arts of the 20th century.

According to MNAR expert Petruta Vlad, who curated the exhibition, the show offers three possibilities to approach modern Romanian art: “The first is the historical approach, as the exhibition chronologically covers the 1890–1958 period; the second reveals the theoretical interest for the status of drawing as an autonomous work of contemporary art, beside the improvised sketch and the unfinished drawing; and the third is an approach on modern vision, where image is built based on reality, seen as a game of mirrors”.