Spiru Vergulescu

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Spiru Vergulescu was a Romanian painter and draughtsman whose practice centred on the representation of the historic city. He trained at the Technical School of Art in Bucharest, now the Nicolae Tonitza High School of Arts, and graduated in 1961 from the Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of Fine Arts, where he studied under G. Löwendal, Ion Popescu-Negreni, Paul Miracovici and Catul Bogdan. In 1968 he became a member of the Union of Fine Artists, consolidating his position within the professional structures of Romanian post-war art. His work was exhibited widely in Romania and abroad and entered a number of museum and private collections. Retrospective exhibitions were organised in Craiova in 2004 and at the National Military Circle in Bucharest in 2009. In 2006 the Gunka and Spiru Vergulescu House Museum was established through a donation made by the artist and his wife to their native city. Vergulescu worked in oil, watercolour and drawing, addressing landscape, portraiture and still life. He also produced pen illustrations for the poetry of George Bacovia, Ion Minulescu and Mihai Eminescu. A portfolio of sixty drawings was published in 2000 under the title Periplu şi univers eminescian. He remains chiefly associated with his urban views, often described as “portraits of houses”. Depicting historical architecture in Bucharest, Craiova, Slatina, Sibiu, Cluj and Iaşi, as well as in Paris, Balchik, Ruse and Istanbul, these works record the architectural fabric of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through a measured chromatic range and stable compositional order. Although the human figure is frequently absent, the inhabited character of the city is implied. His painting negotiates the boundary between documentation and pictorial construction, contributing a sustained visual archive of the Romanian urban landscape.