28.01.2022
online
Lecture programme associated to the exhibition:
The Modern Idol. Henry Moore in the Eastern Bloc
CELIA GHYKA: Moore’s Influence on Romanian Sculpture.
Notes for an Open Research
Friday, 28 January 2022, 18:00
event in Romanian language
Zoom live on Facebook
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The Institute of the Present continues the lecture series in connection with the exhibition “The Modern Idol. Henry Moore in the Eastern Bloc” open at the National Museum of Art of Romania between 14 October 2021–6 February 2022. Conceived in a documentary format, the exhibition proposes a contextualisation of the Henry Moore exhibition taken on tour to Bucharest, Bratislava, Prague and Budapest in 1966–67. The exhibition is a collective research project, being initiated by art historians Alina Șerban (Bucharest), Daniel Véri (Budapest) and Lujza Kotočová (Prague) and contains a series of interviews with witnesses of the exhibition in Romania, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Considered, at the time, the largest international retrospective of the artist, the exhibition, organised by the British Council in cooperation with local authorities in Romania, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the exhibition featured works—sculptures and drawings—spanning over five decades, from 1924 until 1964. The research featured in the exhibition explores the stories of these shows in the three countries.
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CELIA GHYKA: Moore’s Influence on Romanian Sculpture.
Notes for an Open Research
“The Modern Idol. Henry Moore in the Eastern Bloc exhibition retraces with exquisite documentary precision the cultural, diplomatic role that the 1966 travelling retrospective played in the general context of an apparent openness of the Romanian official culture towards the West. While the present exhibition follows the reception of Moore’s work in the documents of the time, in written and audio-visual press, my intervention will extend this context, looking at the influence that the 1966 exhibition organised by the British Council at the Dalles Hall would have on the local production of sculpture.
The discovery of Moore’s work takes place against the backdrop of a larger cultural opening and the reorientation of the kind of sculpture made in Romania, a comeback towards an already settled modernity marked by the ever more important presence of Brâncuși’s influence, openly recognised by the British sculptor in several texts featured in the exhibition. Starting from the 1966 moment, I will discuss, from this perspective, the work of several Romanian artists, both from the already acknowledged generation, the sculptors born in the second and third decades of the 20th century, and the younger generations, as the exhibition offers them the opportunity of new formal and spatial experimentation, in plain opposition with the previous decade of Socialist Realism.”— Celia Ghyka
CELIA GHYKA, PhD associate professor and architect, teaches courses and seminars on the theory of architecture at the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest, where she heads the Department of History and Theory of Architecture and Heritage Preservation. Her research and interests focus on themes such as public space, monuments, memory, arts and psychoanalysis, contemporary art and architecture, post-socialist city, spatial violence, and civil society, which she addresses in international and Romanian academic articles and publications, as well as through her position as guest lecturer and associate professor in postgraduate courses and conferences in France, Austria, and Luxembourg. She is alumna of the New Europe College in Bucharest, of the Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles), and the Fondazione Bogliasco (Italy).
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The exhibition “The Modern Idol. Henry Moore in the Eastern Bloc” is produced by the Institute of the Present in collaboration with the National Museum of Art of Romania and will be open between 14 October 2021–6 February 2022 in the Kretzulescu wing of MNAR (Calea Victoriei 49–53, access from corner with Valter Mărăcineanu). General opening hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 10:00–18:00, last entry at 17:30.
The Institute of the Present is a research and an artist resource platform in the field of visual and performing culture conceived by Ștefania Ferchedău and Alina Șerban. Centred on artists and their personal accounts, on time-specific encounters and forms of (self) archiving, the Institute looks at various practices and situations from the recent past until today from a transnational and transcultural perspective.
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Funders: Cultural programme co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund; Project supported by the Romanian Order of Architects from the architectural stamp
Partners: Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Museum of Art – Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI)
Supported by: Czech Centre Bucharest, Polish Institute Bucharest, Liszt Institute – Hungarian Cultural Centre Bucharest
Logistic partners: Policolor, Ytong
Visual identity: Andrei Turenici (Daniel & Andrew Studio)
Photograph: Courtesy of Quadro Archive, Cluj. Artist: Rodica Ungureanu. Photographer: Szabó Tamás
The project does not necessarily represent the standpoint of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN cannot be held liable for the content of the project or the manner in which the outcomes of the project may be used. These shall devolve entirely on the beneficiary of the financing.
Contact: ip@institutulprezentului.ro
