Prof. Erwin Kessler's lecture: “100 years of (re)modernisms of Romanian art”

25 April, 6 p.m.

On April 25 we invite you to a lecture by Prof. Erwin Kessler. The expert on avant-garde and modern art from the University of Bucharest will introduce the attendees to the process of changes taking place in Romanian art, mainly in the 19th and 20th centuries.

During the lecture “100 years of (re)modernisms of Romanian art,” Professor Erwin Kessler will talk about the changes in the work of Romanian artists in the 19th and 20th centuries. He will recall the most famous artists and the trends that influenced their work. He will show how, over the years, often opposing trends and groups, which understood the term modernism differently, developed. On the one hand, they were rooted in Romanian tradition and folklore, while on the other they followed currents in art popular in the rest of Europe, such as Impressionism, Art Nouveau and the avant-garde.

After World War I, art directed toward national themes clashed with avant-garde tendencies. Some artists questioned whether Romania should focus on folk culture, while others, gathered around the magazine Contimporanul, negated traditional art and mixed political internationalism with aesthetic radicalism. When Socialist Realism emerged, it marked Romania's art scene for almost 20 years. After 1989, neotraditionalism functioned in opposition to neo-avant-garde currents. The lecture will also explore how the term modernism functions in contemporary Romanian art and how today's artists approach it.   

   

Prof. Erwin Kessler – curator, philosopher, associate professor of art history and aesthetics at the University of Bucharest. Research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy in Bucharest.Founder of MARE (Museum of Contemporary Art) in Bucharest. Author of numerous scientific publications and books, editor of catalogs accompanying exhibitions. His main areas of research are the history, aesthetics and theory of modernist, avant-garde and contemporary art, phenomenological aesthetics and visual anthropology.

Lecture will be held in English with translation into Polish.

The exhibition “One eye laughs, the other cries. Art from Romania in the Collection of Ovidiu Şandora” is co-organized by the International Cultural Centre in Krakow and the Romanian Cultural Institute in Warsaw.

Event within the framework of the Romania-Poland Cultural Season 2024-2025

The Romania-Poland Cultural Season 2024-2025 is organized by the Romanian Ministry of Culture and the Romanian Institute of Culture, on the Romanian side, and by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, in cooperation with the Polish Institute in Bucharest, on the Polish side.