Ion Țuculescu

60 years after the decisive 1965 exhibition at Dalles Hall, Art Safari, under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture, undertakes a comprehensive review and perhaps a reassessment of the work of the giant of the beginnings of Romanian contemporary art, the “singular case” that was Ion Țuculescu.

The exhibition Ion Țuculescu. The Inspired Genius presents more than 100 representative works from the country’s most important museums and private collections and presents, for the first time, an analytical and chronological account of the genesis, course, development and unparalleled breadth of the work of this remarkable artist.

Țuculescu’s mix of experimentation and modernity on the one hand, and archaism and speculative folklore on the other, provides the framework within which the exhibition outlines the current national cultural condition, with its vectors simultaneously and oppositely directed towards the old and the new, towards decorative motifs and existential pathos, towards scientific research and mythological exaltation. Țuculescu is the embodiment of all these contradictory impulses characteristic of the Romanian collective psyche.

Starting from his double intellectual figure as a doctor, researcher and rigorous scientist, on the one hand, and as a self-taught artist, characterised by an incomparable experimental and humanistic fervour, on the other hand, the exhibition presents the portrait of a truly complete and complex personality of modern Romanian culture, which combines methodology and rational, laboratory practice with the irrational frenzy of the deepest impulses and with ideological and even political concerns that are extremely relevant for Romanian society.

After the major exhibition at Dalles Hall in 1965, Ion Țuculescu became, for the Romanian cultural consciousness, the totemic figure of explosive creative power, of unrestrained freedom of expression and of unmistakable national spiritual authenticity. A champion of a modernist morphology that blatantly ignored the regressive Socialist Realism of the time, faithful to a bold brushstroke, full of the passionate thrill of Abstract Expressionism, but above all an explorer of a personal mythology rooted in the archaic structures of the collective subconscious, Țuculescu quickly became the most influential artistic figure of the opening era of local Communism, from the mid-60s and early 70s.

The influence of his work and example on the aesthetic and ideological formation of generations of Romanian artists is undeniable – from Gheorghe Berindei and Paul Gherasim to Horia Bernea and Florin Mitroi, from Andrei Cădere and Florin Niculiu to Vioara Bara or Maxim Liulcă, Țuculescu’s mark is constant, whether we are talking about the archaic layers of personal mythology or local folklore motifs fused with modern subjectivities, or the passionate expressionist highlighting of a painting full of fervour.

The concept of the exhibition, developed by a team surrounding the curator Cristian Vechiu, is based on the notion of “mutations”, proposed and developed by Țuculescu himself in relation to his own work. The notion of “mutation” defines, in the artist’s own words, the alternation of “linear periods” with “periods of rupture” and “unexpected changes” (even for himself). This concept is reflected in the way the exhibition is organised, which identifies the periods of (stylistic and professional) continuity, but also moments of discontinuity and the artist’s revelation to himself and to society.

An undertaking of unprecedented scale and extent, Ion Țuculescu. The Inspired Genius is an extraordinary exhibition that presents to the public the most complex and complete version of a unique and incomparable creator.

Curator: Cristian Vechiu
Under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture
Partners: Brukenthal National Museum, The National Museum of Art of Romania