Baba, Corneliu (1906-1997) - Fear
Corneliu Baba was a Romanian painter, primarily a portraitist, but also known as a genre painter and an illustrator of books. Having first studied under his father, the academic painter Gheorghe Baba, Baba studied briefly at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Bucharest. His first public exhibition was in 1934 in the town of Băile Herculane; this led to his studying later that year under Nicolae Tonitza in Iaşi, finally receiving a diploma in Fine Arts in 1938, where he was named assistant to the Chair of Painting in 1939 and a Professor of Painting in 1946. Shortly after his 1948 official debut with a painting called The Chess Player at the Art Salon in Bucharest, he was arrested and briefly imprisoned in Galata Prison in Iaşi.
Despite an initially uneasy relationship with communist authorities who denounced him as formalist, Baba soon established himself as an illustrator and artist. In 1955 he was allowed to travel to the Soviet Union, and won a Gold Medal in an international exhibition in Warsaw, Poland. In 1956, Baba accompanied The Chess Player and two other paintings showed at the Venice Biennale, after which the paintings traveled on to exhibits in Moscow, Leningrad, and Prague. In 1958 Baba was appointed Professor of Painting at the Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of Fine Arts, where Niculiţă Secrieriu and Ștefan Câlția were among his pupils. By this time, his earlier problems with the communist authorities appear to have been smoothed over. In the next decade, both he and his paintings were to travel the world, participating in exhibitions in places as diverse as Cairo, Helsinki, Vienna, and New Delhi. In 1962, the Romanian government gave him the title of People's Artist; in 1963 he was appointed a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy, and in 1964 was similarly honored by the East Berlin Academy of Fine Art. Honors and exhibitions continued to accumulate, ranging from a 1970 solo exhibition in New York City to the receipt of a Red Star decoration in 1971. While his name became a household word in Romania and, to a lesser extent, throughout the Eastern bloc, he never achieved comparable fame in the West.
Perhaps unfashionably for a 20th century painter, Baba consciously worked in the tradition of the Old Masters, although, from the outset of his studies with his father, he was also influenced by expressionism, art nouveau, academicism and "remnants" of impressionism. Baba himself cited El Greco, Rembrandt, and Goya as particularly strong influences. This did not put him in good stead either with the official Socialist realism of the Eastern bloc (where, especially in the early Communist years, he periodically received damning criticism—and sometimes punishment, such as being suspended from teaching—for his "formalism"). Nearly all of Corneliu Baba's work remains in Romania; hardly a major museum in that country is without some of his work.
Baba, Corneliu (1906-1997) - Fear
Corneliu Baba was a Romanian painter, primarily a portraitist, but also known as a genre painter and an illustrator of books. Having first studied under his father, the academic painter Gheorghe Baba, Baba studied briefly at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Bucharest. His first public exhibition was in 1934 in the town of Băile Herculane; this led to his studying later that year under Nicolae Tonitza in Iaşi, finally receiving a diploma in Fine Arts in 1938, where he was named assistant to the Chair of Painting in 1939 and a Professor of Painting in 1946. Shortly after his 1948 official debut with a painting called The Chess Player at the Art Salon in Bucharest, he was arrested and briefly imprisoned in Galata Prison in Iaşi.
Despite an initially uneasy relationship with communist authorities who denounced him as formalist, Baba soon established himself as an illustrator and artist. In 1955 he was allowed to travel to the Soviet Union, and won a Gold Medal in an international exhibition in Warsaw, Poland. In 1956, Baba accompanied The Chess Player and two other paintings showed at the Venice Biennale, after which the paintings traveled on to exhibits in Moscow, Leningrad, and Prague. In 1958 Baba was appointed Professor of Painting at the Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of Fine Arts, where Niculiţă Secrieriu and Ștefan Câlția were among his pupils. By this time, his earlier problems with the communist authorities appear to have been smoothed over. In the next decade, both he and his paintings were to travel the world, participating in exhibitions in places as diverse as Cairo, Helsinki, Vienna, and New Delhi. In 1962, the Romanian government gave him the title of People's Artist; in 1963 he was appointed a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy, and in 1964 was similarly honored by the East Berlin Academy of Fine Art. Honors and exhibitions continued to accumulate, ranging from a 1970 solo exhibition in New York City to the receipt of a Red Star decoration in 1971. While his name became a household word in Romania and, to a lesser extent, throughout the Eastern bloc, he never achieved comparable fame in the West.
Perhaps unfashionably for a 20th century painter, Baba consciously worked in the tradition of the Old Masters, although, from the outset of his studies with his father, he was also influenced by expressionism, art nouveau, academicism and "remnants" of impressionism. Baba himself cited El Greco, Rembrandt, and Goya as particularly strong influences. This did not put him in good stead either with the official Socialist realism of the Eastern bloc (where, especially in the early Communist years, he periodically received damning criticism—and sometimes punishment, such as being suspended from teaching—for his "formalism"). Nearly all of Corneliu Baba's work remains in Romania; hardly a major museum in that country is without some of his work.