HOME PAGE HISTORY ARCHAEOLOGY PROJECTS GUESTBOOK CONTACT
PRESENTATION BIOGRAPHY CRITICAL EXCERPTS WORKS VISITOR INFORMATIONS HOME PAGE Versiunea romana
Search:

The pyramid of sacrifices - (War orphan), Focsani - 1924

Vasile Blendea, at one hundred years from his birth, is indisputably a glory of Targoviste. Our statement, sustained by so uncouth words, wishes to set without a trace of prejudice the place of this great artist right in the cultural topos which which conceived him, soothing its creation power, a space whose lost glow, if he didn't reinvent it, maybe we would be tempted to believe today that it never existed... Personally, I can't imagine Matei Basarab, Dan the Second or Vlad the Impaler in no other hypostasis than the one spectrally sculptured in stone by Vasile Blendea. How could I erase from my so beautifully confused memory the strange face of Vasila Carlova, a Rimbaldi soldier bronze casted by the sculptor like the essences of the poetry itself.

Without a doubt, Vasila Blendea is one of these rare artists who, secretly entering in contact with the genious of the place, borrow its immortality.

Stefan Ion Ghilimescu
The Cultural Inspectorate of the Dambovita county

Nicolae Iorga - 1935

Vasile Blendea was borned one hundred years ago and will continue to be borned again and again. Because his work will last, and by it, the remembrance of the man. But the biography, as a retaining of a distinct artistic physiognomy in the national perception, remains to be written, if anyone gives reason to the words of George Calinescu: "Who doesn't live post mortem is not the object of a biography".

Vasile Blendea, as a man, has lived only the happening of its own work, with a particulary distinction, with the modesty of those who had the highest values and models' cult, modesty blamed with elegance by some people. But we also are to blamed for the "elite obsession", as Vasile Dragut wrote in the introduction of a catalogue from 1977, rather the obsession of the stars, of the modern spectacular, I think. That is everything that this authentic creator, concentrated on his art and expressing despite towards noise, violent gestures and attitudes, could not do. The work of Vasile Blendea, large and unitary, grew in a superb and joyful solitude capturing two voices: of the history and of the present reality. His dialogue with the world restricted itself also on the field of art: teaching.
He received a profound education at the Art Academy in Bucharest and France; he was one of the favourite students of Dimitrie Paciurea and one of the youngs in which Nicolae Iorga has reasonably invested many expectations. He made his first appearance under the sign of a somatic melancholy typical for his master, also perceptible later aimig to choose and develop in time the classical construction, the mathematical control of the form and composition, with sensible modelling, perfectly adequate to the monumental or interior solutions. Individual in everything he has done, Vasile Blendea didn't speculate the style because he didn't have a mannerist structure. He permanently had a spiritual motivation, far deeper than the language one, whom he otherwise mastered impeccably. The artist had something from the devoutness of the echo towards the sound and this sound was the history of the country, its reality, its people, as antiquated as they seem now, in the sunset of an old and tired century. Moreover, the monuments he raised, alive and touching, saved from the artificial rhetoric and solemnity of so many others, sign of hasty and emotionless gratitude, seem to have emerged from duty. His "little" policy as a romanian was the only policy he admitted and was good at.

The hero's homage, Voinesti - 1934-1935

Vasile Blendea was considered more a sculptor. He is a rare case in our arts, as the centenarian review proves it. He succeded in painting and graphics with equal persuasion and individuality strength of the means. Vasile Blendea, as someone with an acute look observed, illustrates in our country, in modern times the ideal of the renaissancist artist, capable of communicating through various expression possibility. As the old ones were, he was a polyglot in his way.

Vasile Blendea illustrates that artistic nature somehow personal, crucially dependent on the spirit of the place. He connected for ever his name and work with Targoviste, where the history and the day-to-day existence mutually potentiate themselves in a thin mixture of heroic and natural, of ancient and actual. Through him this past capital of the Romanian Country came to dream, to wear its royal gown on the street of the new day. A museum that rejoins the life labour and devoutness should come into existence, in the first instance as a homage which the city owes it to itself. And next as a necessary reward for a certain value in the national conception. Finding a place for the one who sanctified it, as it is said, means, if we pay attention, finding a privileged spiritual place to whom blows the appreciation and admiration. It may be the only chance of valorizing our being in the age of all depreciations.

Cornel Radu Constantinescu

Atelier - 1985

The celebration of the Vasile Blendea centenary precedes, as a prologue, the anniversary of 600 years since Targoviste was testified as a capital of the Romanian Country in 1396 and we consider this retrospective emblematic.

In all the chronicles and references concerning the creation of Vasile Blendea, the forwarding is made to what Targoviste meant in the plenitude of the works which will be given to the city - sculpture, easel painting, graphics, renovation of medieval frescos.

Begger - 1934

Citadel of the waivodes, of the great cultural personalities: writers, artists, heroes or humble presences of the country, immortalized with intense compassion and emotion, the city is faithfully correlated by Vasile Blendea from the arcade of the monument - grandiose statuary compositions - to the sensible images of the roads from the inter-war period - distinguished works about Stelea Monastery or the Royal Court - to the "world above the world" as it was named by Ion Vasiliu, choppers, numb with cold carters, gas workers, women at the mill, soldiers - the narrow gullet of the repressive desolation.

In the last years, Vasile Vlendea came often to the park of the Writer's Museum, talking to those near him, at a few steps away from the illustrious bust dedicated to the writer I. Al. Bratescu-Voinesti.
In Targoviste and in Dambovita we find at all steps the marks of Vasile Blendea, unforgettable in the memory of a stormy past, constant illuminated by the torches of the national spirituality.

Monica Singeorzan

Web design & web-hosting
Crios


Museums of Targoviste: [ The "Royal Court" of Targoviste | The museum of history | "Stelea" Galleries | The museum of dambovita's writers |
The museum of printing and old romanian book | The "Gheorhge Petrascu" house-atelier | The "Vasile Blendea" museum ]
Museums of Dambovita: [ The museum of etnography from Pucioasa | The Village museum from Pietrosita | The memorial house "I.L. Caragiale |
Museum of Moreni | The "Gabriel Popescu" atelier-house from Vulcana Pandele ]