Description

Natalia Dumitresco was born in Bucharest in 1915. She graduated the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest. Her lifelong marriage with the Romanian sculptor Alexandre Istrati made them an important artist couple of the time. They moved to Paris in 1947 where they shared the studio with Constantin Brâncusi with whom they are buried in Montparnasse Cemetery. Her artist friend played an important part in Natalia Dumitresco’s recognition and the publication of her monography in 1986. In Paris she was part of the Réalités Nouvelles after the WWII. Wassily Kandinsky had a major influence on her practice which can be seen in how she created abstract forms with small, coloured squares on her canvases. She received the Kandinsky Prize in 1955. Her method was austere and before moving to France she exclusively used black and white. While her strict austerity did not change and the geometric modulations of squares, grids, rectangles and diamonds remained, she familiarized herself with colour theory and started to use them on her works as well. “Ocre jaune, cité bleu” from 1978-1980 is a perfect example of this. The geometric rectangles build up the shape but the fillings of the small modulations are expressionist circular lines of different colours.