Constantin Blendea

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Constantin Blendea emerged as one of the defining figures of Romanian painting in the interwar period, articulating a distinctive balance between modernist sensibility and classical discipline. Educated at the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest under Camil Ressu and Jean Al. Steriadi, he cultivated a compositional rigour marked by clarity and restraint. Formed within the interwar artistic milieu - where French Post-Impressionism and the Cézannian legacy intersected with local traditions - Blendea developed an approach that valued on structure and lyricism in equal measure. Throughout his career, Blendea sustained a profound dialogue with the human figure and with the moral and psychological dimensions of portraiture. His works reveal a lucid meditation on form, seeking equilibrium between the observed and the constructed image. Over time, his painterly language evolved toward a refined synthesis of expressive austerity and controlled chromatic tension, avoiding both sentimentalism and decorative excess. Parallel to his work as a painter, Blendea was a engaged teacher and scenographer, actively involved in the institutional life of post-war Romanian art. His contribution to stage design and monumental painting display the same pursuit of order and spatial coherence that defines his easel work. Regularly exhibited at national salons and representated internationally, his oeuvre occupies a key position within the broader European discourse on reconciliating modernity with tradition. Blendea’s art retains its relevance through the ethical seriousness of its construction and the disciplined contemplation of the human condition that underlies his pictorial vision.