Ion Irimescu

Ion Irimescu (February 27, 1903, Fălticeni – October 29, 2005, Fălticeni) was one of Romania's greatest sculptors and sketchers, often referred to as the "patriarch of Romanian art and sculpture".

His mother descended from an old French family with claims to aristocracy. As a child, while he was out at play, he found a grenade from World War I which exploded in his hand and nearly killed him. Though he was eventually healed, this accident nearly destroyed his dream to become a sculptor. From 1924 to 1928 he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest, under Dimitrie Paciurea and Oscar Han. In 1928 he made his debut at the Official Salon of Painting and Sculpture in Bucharest, becoming a regular participant there. In 1929 he received a scholarship to the Romanian School at Fontenay aux Roses in France and exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français in Paris; in the following year he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Joseph Bernard. Until 1933 he participated at the Salon d'Automne and Salon du Printemps in Paris, receiving in 1932 the Honorary Mention of the Société des Artistes Français for his self-portrait.

Irimescu returned to Romania in 1933, and from 1937 he took part regularly at the exhibitions of Tinerimea Artistică (The Artistic Youth), a society founded in 1901 that included the most prominent Romanian artists; in 1938 he became an associate member of the society. Between 1940 and 1950 he was professor of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Iaşi, and from 1950 he was a professor at the Ion Andreescu Institute of Fine and Decorative Art in Cluj-Napoca.

His 1956 participation to the Biannual Exhibition in Venice (with 15 works in the Romanian pavilion) was followed by another in 1961 to a contemporary sculpture exhibition at the Musée Rodin in Paris. In 1964 he was named professor of sculpture at the Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of Plastic Arts in Bucharest, where he was a close friend of painter Corneliu Baba. He eventually became the head of the sculpture department at the Institute.

Between 1978 and 1989 he was the president of the Romanian Union of Plastic Artists. He received the title of 'Doctor honoris causa' from the Universities of Iaşi and Cluj and was also named 'Master Emeritus of the People' (1964). His works have been exhibited around the world (Paris, Moscow, Belgrade, Budapest, Istanbul, Warsaw, Rome, Prague, Oslo, Tokyo, etc). Ion Irimescu was member of the Romanian Academy. In 2001 he was awarded the Prize of Excellence for Romanian Culture. In 2003, upon becoming a centenarian, he was distinguished with a remarkable celebration by the Romanian Academy and Romanian Ministry of Culture. General School No. 2 in his native city (where Mihail Sadoveanu had studied) was renamed in his honor. The Center for Study and Creation in Fălticeni also bears his name.

Irimescu became well known not only for his large- and small-scale portrait busts, but also for the neutral stance that he took as an 'official' artist during the years of communist domination. Although he was able to adapt to the forcefully imposed requirements of Socialist Realism, he responded to its abolition by a new creative phase, in which he developed a vegetal morphology inspired by his own calligraphic drawings and the malleability of ceramics. Although Irimescu produced many sculptures in stone, conceived for and erected in public spaces, he concentrated more on modeling and on small-scale sculptures.

In 1975 a museum was established in Fălticeni with a substantial donation from the artist. The museum building is a historic monument, dating from the middle of the 19th century and had various destinations until 1974, when it was given to the art museum. In 1974 the sculptor Ion Irimescu took the initiative to establish the museum, at first as a department of the Town Museum and made some donations. Later the value of the collection grew, currently being the richest author collection, and in 1991 a museum emerged. It comprises the most representative works by the sculptor Ion Irimescu: 313 sculptures and 1000 drawings: portraits, compositions, monument project carried out in the rondebosse or altorelief technique, in gypsum, wood, terracotta, marble, bronze works of graphics especially donated to the museum by the author. The museum also includes the artist's personal library (1500 volumes).

From Wikipedia.
Images from www.plural-magazine.com, www.falticeni.ro, ro.wikipedia.org.

Camil Ressu

Camil Ressu (January 28, 1880, Galaţi – April 1, 1962, Bucharest) was a Romanian painter and academic, one of the most significant art figures of Romania.

Born in Galaţi, Ressu originated from an Aromanian family that migrated to Romania from Macedonia at the start of the 19th century. His father, Constantin Ressu, who was a journalist and had studied law in Brussels, was an artist in his spare time. From 1897 to 1899 Camil Ressu studied at the Fine Arts School in Bucharest with Professor G.D. Mirea. He continued his studies at the Fine Arts School in Iaşi, where he studies with painters Gheorghe Popovici and Gheorghe Panaiteanu Bardasare, and finished his studied in Iaşi in 1902, being awarded a silver medal. In 1902, after a visiting tour of the Munich museums, he would go to Paris for studying at the Julian Academy as an apprentice to Jean Paul Laurens.

After coming back to Romania in 1908, he contributed satirical drawings for such publications as "Adevărul", "Furnica", "Facla" and "Cronica". Soon he joined the "Artistic Youth" events, participating in official salons and other group exhibitions in the country or abroad. During his life he had two personal exhibitions in Bucharest (in 1914 and 1955 respectively). In 1917 he was one of the founding members of the "Romanian Art" Society, to include painters Nicolae Dărăscu, Ştefan Dimitrescu, Iosif Iser, Marius Bunescu and the sculptors Dimitrie Paciurea, Cornel Medrea, Ion Jalea and Oscar Han. Also he was on the initiative taken in 1921 for setting up the Romanian Plastic Artists' Trade Union he was to preside over for two years. He founded the Art of Romania association in Iaşi.

He was Professor and Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest so far as 1941. Starting with 1950, he was honorary president of the Plastic Artists' Union, to resume at the same time his academic position as professor at the "N. Grigorescu" Arts Institute. He was awarded in 1955 the People's Artist title, to become one year later a member of the Romanian Academy. Being largely exercised in studies of human body, of landscapes and objects under his eyes, he would, conscious of the drawing and colors performance, dare to innovate the art language while keeping the traditional values intact. His attachment to traditional values was mainly proved by his pictures of the village world seen as an immemorial preserver of those traditions.

Anghel Saligny

Anghel Saligny (April 19, 1854, Şerbăneşti – June 17, 1925, Bucharest) was a great Romanian engineer, forerunner of metal and concrete construction science.

His father, Alfred Saligny, an educator, was a French immigrant to Romania. He started his studies at the boarding school founded by his father in Focşani, then went on to high school, initially also in Focşani and then in Potsdam, Germany. He pursued astronomy at the University in Berlin - as a student of Hermann von Helmholtz, and engineering studies at the Polytechnic Institute in Charlottenburg (1870-1874), and then contributed to the construction of railways in Saxony (Cottbus-Frankfurt). He was a founding member of the Bucharest Polytechnic Society (the precursor to today's Bucharest Polytechnic Institute) - and its president between 1895-1897 and 1910-1911 - and was even appointed a Minister of Public Works. In 1892, he was elected a member of the Romanian Academy, and he served as its president between 1907 and 1910. Anghel Saligny's brother Alfons Oscar Saligny (1853–1903) was a chemist and educator who was also elected a member of the Romanian Academy.

He drew the plans for the Adjud–Târgu Ocna, which included the first mixed-use (railway and highway) bridges in Romania (1881–1882). He was also involved in the construction of numerous other metallic bridges, such as the one at Cosmeşti over the Siret River, which measured 430 m in length. Between 1884 and 1889, Saligny planned and built the first silos in the world made of reinforced concrete, which are preserved today in Constanţa, Brăila and Galaţi. In the port of Constanţa, he created a special pool to allow oil export and two silos for grain export.

Anghel Saligny's most important work was the King Carol I Bridge over the Danube at Cernavodă. Although a public offer had been held by the Romanian government for the erection of a bridge in that location, all projects were found to be subpar and then rejected. Based on his previous experience, Saligny was then selected and given the daunting (at the time) task to draw up the plans for the new structure. Construction work for the bridge started November 26, 1895, in the presence of King Carol I of Romania. The bridge has five openings, with four being 140 m wide, and the central one spanning 190 m. To allow ships to pass under the bridge, it was raised 30 m above the water. The endurance test was performed on the official opening day, when a convoy of locomotives drove on it at 85 km/h. The bridge at Cernavodă measures 4.088 m in length, with 1,662 m over the Danube, and 920 m over the Borcea arm of Danube. At the time, it was the longest bridge in Europe, and the third longest bridge in the world. The structure was famous for its era, competing with Gustave Eiffel's engineering works in France — the Garabit viaduct and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It was later renamed Anghel Saligny Bridge, and was not used since 1987, after the construction of a new bridge.

After Wikipedia.

Gheorghe Marinescu

Gheorghe Marinescu (February 28, 1863, Bucharest – May 15, 1938, Bucharest) was a Romanian neurologist, founder of the Romanian School of Neurology.

Fatherless, Marinescu was guided, at his mother’s insistence and due to precarious means, towards becoming a priest, entering the seminary. Acquiring ethical and moral conduit, he then attends the Polytechnic School and then the classes of the Faculty of Medicine at the Bucharest University, with Victor Babeş as one of his professors. He received most of his medical education as preparator at the laboratory of histology at the Brâncoveanu Hospital and as assistant at the Bacteriological Institute under Victor Babeş, and with Babeş already early published several works on myelitis transversa, hysterical muteness, dilatation of the pupil in pneumonia etc.

Marinescu went with a grant to Paris to undertake postgraduate training in neurology and studied here for eight years while working for two great hospitals: the Salpêtrière Hospital, run by the famous Jean-Martin Charcot, and the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital. He later worked with Carl Weigert in Frankfurt a.M. and then with Emil du Bois-Reymond in Berlin. On the assignment of Pierre Marie he lectured on the pathological anatomy of acromegaly at the Berlin International Congress in 1890. Returning to the country, he will make the best use of what he had previously learned, in the Pantelimon (where a new professorial department had been created for him) and Colentina hospitals. He received his doctorate in 1895 at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris. Shortly thereafter, in 1897, a chair of Clinical Neurology was created in the University of Bucharest, at the Colentina Hospital. He remained in this post for the next 41 years and is regarded as the founder of the Romanian School of Neurology.

Between July 1898 and 1901 Marinescu made the first science films in the world, in his clinic in Bucharest: The walking troubles of organic hemiplegy (1898), The walking troubles of organic paraplegies (1899), A case of hysteric hemiplegy healed through hypnosis (1899), The walking troubles of progressive locomotion ataxy (1900) and Illnesses of the muscles (1901). In 1924, Auguste Lumière recognized the priority of professor Marinescu concerning the first science films.

Gheorghe Marinescu has been one of the first doctors in the world to apply histologic, histopathologic and anatomoclinics in the scientific research in the field of neurology. Important original contributions are made in the field of fiziology, histopathology and the practical learning of the nervous system (the theory of reflex trophicity, the palmomentony reflex, kinetoplasma, chromatolysis, neuronophagy). He owned over 1000 highly precious publications making a significant contribution to the world medicine in the domain of modern neurology. He published the book “The Nervous Cell” (2 volumes, over 1000 pages) in 1909, in Paris. It was the first book of that kind in the world, and it was not surpassed yet. Gheorghe Marinescu was an eminent teacher. In his lectures he emphasised ideas and gave perspective for further investigations. He was elected as a member of Romanian Academy in 1906 and was also member of 7 foreign academies.

Several words from his will: “No flower. No discourse. Those who have loved me should use the money for poor children and the good words to encourage the suffering… leaving for the world nobody ever came back from, I would not want to affect anybody but the truth must yet be told: there is too much injustice in the blessed Romanian Country”.

Iosif Iser

Iosif Iser (May 21, 1881, Bucharest — April 25, 1958, Bucharest) was a great Romanian painter and graphic artist.


He studied painting in Munich under Anton Azbe and Johann Herterich. After a period in Romania (1905-1907) he went to Paris, where he studied at the Académie Ranson and mixed with the avant-garde of Montmartre, including Brâncuşi and Derain. Returning to Bucharest in 1909, he organized the first exhibition of modern art at the Athenée Palace.


During World War I he fought on the Moldavian front, but he continued to paint, including military personnel. His work in this period was influenced by that of Cézanne; it was geometric in spirit, but figurative, and it concentrated on representations of the exotic physiognomies and the spectacular landscape of the Tartars of Balcic, a small port on the Black Sea. The best-known of these is the Tartar Family (1921; Bucharest, N. Mus. A.), which in its stylized volumes shows the influence of Cubism.


He has participated in 1926 at the Berlin Secession exhibition, and the '30s is present in many personal and group exhibitions in Paris, Bucharest, Brussels, The Hague and Amsterdam, the most remarkable event being the retrospective in Bucharest in 1936, when he exposed 431 works. Iser is one of the founders of the artistic group "Art", together with George Petraşcu and Ştefan Popescu, all awarded with the Grand Prize at the International Exhibition of Paris in 1937.


Iser's work was also influenced by literature and by the performing arts. He specialized in re-creating the environments of ballerinas and harlequins (e.g. Harlequin and Dancer, 1929; Bucharest, N. Mus. A.). He lived again in Paris from 1921 to 1934, and after his return to Romania he remained faithful to his established themes. After the WWII, the artist was present at several group and personal exhibitions in New York (1948), Moscow and St. Petersburg (1956), Vienna (1957), Venice Biennale (1954). In 1955, he was elected a full member of the Romanian Academy.