Christmas through the children eyes

                         Radu Motas, "Saint Mary with her Son"

                                Radu Motas, "Winter"

Art can be in so many places... not neccessary only in Art Universities, Art Highschools, Museums, Galleries or Art workshops. Art and artists can be found in unthinkable places as Institutional Centers for children without parents or whose parents just forget about their existance. It is not children’s fault that they were born, but still they are the first forgetten.

                  Radu Motas, "Selfportrait"

Dr. Nour Foundation for Art and Heritage wanted to be closed to these children on Christmas.

       „Saint Nicolae” Center is one of the public institution which give shelter to children. Its good employees try to give them a way in life, a chance which the parents themselves could not give or they were not interested to give. Still, there are real talented children.

         Radu Motas is one of them. He paints since he was little. Despide of the fact that Radu has hearing problems and parents who preffered to not see him raising next to them, he succeed to graduate the Art Highschool „Nicolae Tonitza” from Bucharest beside any other normal child. And much more then this, he was admitted in Theological Faculty, Sacred Art Section. Radu is a very decent person, with a shy and kind smile on his face, but sure on his hand.

        On his paper, he works only pencils, the only tools that he has to paint. He paint non stop. While we were there he finished Santa Claus.

       
        He decorated all the Center with his very beautiful drawings. Just see his works!

         He started to paint an icon, unfinished unfortunately as he hasn’t enough colours.

         Bianca is another special talented child. She plays violin, but she is good at drums also. She is only 12 years old.

There are 37 children in this Center: Andreea, Alexandra, Alina, Cristina, Georgiana, Nicoleta, Andrei… some of them smiley, other sad, but most of them talented.  

        We say their dreams can become true if we don’t forget them and if they won’t give up of hope.

       A good example is an ex colleague of them who succeed in his rough life to make a way through his talent and work: Regept Ialcin. Just listen to his voice!

Hopes and dreams keep us alive.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

“Who’s afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?” or how Damien Hirst chose Romania’s national colours for a new direction in painting

                  “Who’s afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue” by Damien Hirst, 2000, Butterflies and household gloss paint on canvas, 180 x 180 cm, Selling price: £ 600 000

           And indeed, who might be afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue? A Romanian can’t be afraid of the 3 colours because they represent the national flag of Romania. On the contrary, he should love them and especially if the warm and cold colours have been put together by an artist, and not any artist, but by the internationally renown artist, known particularly for his great appreciation  of colour,  Damien Hirst.

 

                                       Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst, born in 1965 in England, is the most romantic artist of our time and the first artist ever in the history of art to become a millionaire before he was 40 years old. In 2010 his wealth was estimated at £215m in the Sunday Times Rich List.

“I felt that I was in a field in the summer trying to paint these three large canvases, and all the time butterflies kept on flying down and getting stuck in the paint. So I kept painting them in and painting the canvases, and the butterflies kept flying in, and the paint got thicker and thicker as the butterflies kept landing”, said Damien Hirst to his personal friend, the first buyer of the painting.

The painting was a change of direction for the artist. Up to this point his works had to be perfect and were almost quite clinical. This was a move towards a more painterly, natural and confident  approach where the painting became an object in its own right. Later he used this thick paint technique to simulate clouds in other butterfly paintings.

        This art work is currently one of the highlight works in the second exhibition in the House of the Nobleman that opened during London’s Frieze Art Fair in a stunning, Grade 1 listed ambassadorial palace in Cornwall Terrace, a grand sweeping avenue that overlooks Regent’s Park.  The work is being exhibited and sold with the collaboration  of prestigious English curators, English Garden Lounging, who seek out the Romantic and pictursque in art. This is the first time that the work has ever been for sale and is a unique opportunity to purchase the work privately and prior to very high-profile museum and gallery exhibitions of the artist in 2012.

              “Beautiful Bleeding Wound Over the Materialism of Money Painting”, by Damien Hirst, 2005, Household gloss paint and credit card on canvas, 60 x 84 inches (152.4 x 213.4 cm), Gagosian Gallery

     Hirst's first exhibition with Gagosian Gallery, entitled "No Sense of Absolute Corruption," was in 1996 at the now-closed SoHo location in New York. In 2012, “The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011” will take place simultaneously across each of Gagosian Gallery’s eleven locations in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva and Hong Kong. It will include loans from public institutions and private collections as well as from the artist. The exhibition will open in every city on January 12th and continue through February 18th, 2012.

Then in April 2012, Tate Modern will present the first substantial survey of Damien Hirst’s work ever held in the UK. Hirst is widely regarded as one of the most important artists working today and has created some of the most iconic works in recent history. Sponsored by the Qatar Museums Authority, the exhibition will provide a journey through two decades of Hirst’s inventive practice. It will also form part of the London 2012 Festival, the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad. Bringing together over seventy of the artist's seminal works, the exhibition will include sculptures from the early 1990s, such as “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”, in which he suspended a shark in formaldehyde and “Mother and Child Divided“, a four-part sculpture of a bisected cow and calf. 

 “The physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”, by Damien Hirst

“Mother and child divided”, by Damien Hirst

“Mother and child divided”, by Damien Hirst

“Mother and child divided”, by Damien Hirst

     Also on show will be important vitrines, such as “A Thousand Years” 1990, in which the cycle of life is represented by a cow's head, flies and insect-o-cutor. Alongside these sculptures will be cabinets displaying rows of pills, instruments and medical packaging, as well as paintings made throughout Hirst's career from his spot, spin, butterfly and fly series. In addition, two major installations will be on view: “In and Out of Love” 1991, which has not been shown in its entirety since its creation, and “Pharmacy” 1992. It has also just been announced that the exhibition will include Hirst’s 2007 diamond encased human skull, “For The Love Of God,” the first time it will be exhibited in a public museum in Britain.

              “For the Love of God”, by Damien Hirst

        “I want you because I can't have you”, by Damien Hirst

              “The Explosion Exalted”, by Damien Hirst

                   “Virgin Mother”, by Damien Hirst

In 2013, the Qatar Museum Authority will host the first exhibition of Damien's work in Qatar. The curator of the exhibition is yet to be announced but will be an entirely different concept to the exhibition in London at Tate Modern.

Damien Hirst is one of the most prominent artists to have emerged from the British art scene in the 1990s. Hirst’s exploration of imagery is notable for its strong associations to life and death, and to belief and value systems.

Damien Hirst first came to public attention in London in 1988 when he conceived and curated Freeze, an exhibition of his own work and that of his friends and fellow Goldsmiths College students, staged in a disused London warehouse. Almost a quarter of a century since that pivotal show, Hirst has become one of the most influential artists of his generation.

For further information please contact Mary Mc Caughey, English Garden Lounging - mary@englishgardenlounging.com, +44 (0) 7931 425107

Nicolae Grigorescu’s paintings exhibited at Brussels!

"Woman in the garden", Nicolae Grigorescu  

From 4^th of October to 15^th of January 2012 at  "Hotel de Ville", the old City hall of Brussels, the visitors can admire the exhibition L'Age de l'Impressionnisme en Roumanie. Nicolae Grigorescu (1838-1907) – The age of Impressionism in Romania. Nicolae Grigorescu (1838-1907).

Romania's National Art Museum opened in Brussels a big monographic exhibition dedicated to the painter Nicolae Grigorescu. It is for the first time that a Romanian painter has such an exhibition in the elegant rooms of the old City Hall from Brussels.

Partners of this event, produced as part of bilateral cooperation between Romania and Wallonia-Brussels are: Wallonia-Brussels International, Romanian Embassy in Brussels and Brussels City Hall.

The exhibition presents 72 paintings and 20 graphic works from the patrimony of Romania's National Art Museum, covering all periods of the creative artist, focusing on elements of modernity and national spirit revealed in his works.

"A flower among flowers, Miss Millet", Nicolae Grigorescu

JOAN VANDENBERGHE, scientific collaborator Hotel de Ville:

“Unfortunately, Grigorescu is not well known here. Now the public come to see his paintings and discover an impressionist painter who come from a country about which we don’t know to many things.   

The people are curious. All persons that saw the exhibition were very pleased because they discovered Grigorescu’s landscape and through them a small part of Romania. Grigorescu is considered the national painter of Romanian, a symbol of the national identity.

The famous Belgium newspapers were here and wrote about Grigorescu. All of them were surprised of the beauty of Grigorescu’s paintings.

It is very hard to choose among Grigorescu’s works, but I like very much the painting so called by Grigorescu “A flower among flowers”, painting which shows the daughter of Millet, the French painter. Grigorescu loved her, but their love story didn’t end well. I like very much this painting because it is a happy joint between Grigorescu’s Romanian style, I mean the portrait, and the French influences.”

 "A flower among flowers, Miss Millet", Nicolae Grigorescu - detail

JOAN VANDENBERGHE, scientific collaborator Hotel de Ville:

“I like also “Cart with oxes”. We see in these paintings how the animal is important for Grigorescu, this being who live near the human being and help him in nature, so dear to Grigorescu.”

Let’s admire some more of Grigorescu’s paints from private collection:

“Cart with oxes”, Nicolae Grigorescu, signed below in the right side in red, oil on cardboard, 24.5x45 cm, Dr. Nour collection

“Cart with oxes”, Nicolae Grigorescu - detail

"Sheper", Nicolae Grigorescu, signed below in the right side in red, oil on wood, 36.5 x 18.5 cm authenticity confirmed by profesor Remus Niculescu collection, genuine frame, Dr. Nour collection

The exhibition gives the Belgian public the opportunity to find out Grigorescu art, seeking to present new aspects of the artist activity and original connections with European art.

The event, along with exhibition Nicolae Grigorescu (1838-1907) – Itinéraire d’un peintre roumain de l’école de Barbizon à l’impressionnisme (Nicolae Grigorescu (1838-1907) - Itinerary of a romanian painter from Barbizon school to Impressionism) that Romania's National Art Museum organized in 2006 in France, at Agen and Barbizon, contribute to efforts to integrate his painting Grigorescu in the European values circuit.

The National Television realized a reportage on this issue.

More details about the opening hours and location here.