The Bucharest public can see numerous exhibitions this summer, ranging from events dedicated to contemporary artists and Romanian masters to photography and comics. We outline some of the available options below. 

The ninth edition of Art Safari, open at Dacia-Romania Palace, in Bucharest’s Old Town, until August 7, presents five exhibitions showcasing the work of Theodor Aman, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Marcel Iancu, Irina Dragomir and Barbara Klemm.

Barbara Klemm. Light and Dark. Photographs from Germany features snapshots of Germany’s recent history but also images of celebrities such as Madonna, Claudia Schiffer and a series of shots the German photographer took during trips to Romania.

Theodor Aman. The first Romanian modern artist aims to highlight the personality of the artist who contributed decisively to the modernization of Romanian art and founded the local School of Fine Arts.

The exhibition, curated by Elena Olariu, covers more than 100 works on loan from museums in the country or private collections, offering the public to see the lifestyle of the Romanian social and cultural elite of the 19th century as captured in Aman’s works.

Two of Aman’s works are among the most valuable among those showcased at this year’s edition of Art Safari: Proclamarea Unirei (The Proclamation of the Union), evaluated at EUR 350,000, and Hora de la Aninoasa (Round-dance at Aninoasa - pictured below), part of a private collection, evaluated at EUR 310,000.

The central pavilion of Art Safari showcases the exhibition Picasso, Dali & Falla - Le Tricorne, curated by Óscar Carrascosa. It presents the work of Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí created for Manuel de Falla’s ballet Le Tricorne. Picasso was commissioned to create the sets and costumes for the ballet Le Tricorne, and for the London première in 1919, he also designed the dancers’ make-up. Thirty years later, the ballet was repeated in the United States with a set design by Dalí. 

Art Safari’s contemporary pavilion presents the exhibition Irina Dragomir. Red, yellow and blue, while the guest pavilion focuses on the work of artist Marcel Iancu, one of the personalities who guided and defined avant-garde art in Romania and Israel. The exhibition is curated by Raya Zommer-Tal, the director of the Janco Dada Museum in Ein Hod, Israel. 

A new season opens at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest on May 26, showcasing artists such as Marion Baruch, Ion Grigorescu, Cătălin Bălescu, and Elena Scutaru.

Among MNAC’s newly-announced exhibitions is a Marion Baruch retrospective. Marion Baruch. Endless going trying to say is “using a less philological grid of categorization, aiding a more intuitive understanding of the emerging themes and obsessions of Marion Baruch’s art.” The exhibition can be visited on the ground floor and in the Marble Hall of the museum between May 26 and September 25.

Murivale. Marinică, băiatul meu [To Marian], a project by artist Vasile Mureșan – Murivale, covers 400 portraits of his friend, drawn over the past year, together with the portraits of everyone in the museum make up this intervention in the memory of Marian. “The portraits—a form of expression emblematic for Murivale’s artistic project—communicate, overlap and thus articulate a time whose reality is continuous and, being about affection, permanent.” The site specific intervention can be viewed on the West staircase of the museum.

Until September 25, the public can also see the retrospective exhibition dedicated to Ion Grigorescu. It gathers “all the themes, issues, obsessions and idiosyncrasies of the artist, thus generating a comprehensive picture of a body of work that spans over fifty years.”

The complete list of MNAC exhibitions is available here.

During the Covid-19 lockdown period, architecture journalist Wojciech Czaja attempted a trip around the world without leaving his city, Vienna. Using at first an iPhone, he took various shots of buildings, ornaments, and venues that reference foreign places and far away metropolises. The exhibition Almost. 100 Cities in Vienna is the result of this endeavor, and can be seen until June 26 at the Bucharest City Museum, following a partnership with the Austrian Cultural Forum.

The Museum of Recent Art (MARe) hosts since May the exhibition Agricultural Cultures. Agriculture in Modern and Contemporary Romanian Art. Curated by Erwin Kessler, the exhibition looks at how the representations of the topic transformed through the decades in local art. It draws on a collaboration with more than ten national museums and several private collections in the country. 

The exhibition The Life of My Parents. A History of Spain in the 20th Century, featuring fragments from the graphic novels El arte de volar (The Art of Flying) and El ala rota (The Broken Wing) of writer Antonio Altarriba and artist Joaquin Aubert Puigarnau (Kim) is open at the Cervantes Institute in Bucharest until June 28. Writer and screenwriter Antonio Altarriba, also a professor of French Literature at the University of the Basque Country, won the National Comic Award together with Joaquin Aubert Puigarnau for the 2009 El arte de volar. It is a biography of his father, and also the story of an important part of contemporary Spain. Joaquin Aubert Puigarnau is a founding member of the magazine El Jueves, where he published the series Martinez el Facha/ Martinez, the fascist, a satire targeting the Spanish far right. He also won the Grand Prize of the Barcelona International Comic Fair and the Gat Perich International Humor Prize.

The tenth Bucharest Biennale (Bucharest International Biennial for Contemporary Art) takes place between May 26 and July 03, under the title Everybody Deserves to Challenge Pop Culture. It is curated by A.I. JARVIS, first A.I. curator, created by DERAFFE WIEN.

The artists invited and selected by A.I. Jarvis are Cătălin Burcea (RO), Andreea Chirică (RO), Sergiu Diță & Anca Stoica (RO), Dejan Kaludjerović (A/SRB), Bogdan Matei (RO), Ryts Monet (A/IT), Andreea Medar & Mălina Ionescu (RO), Yoshinori Niwa (A/JPN), Josef Polleross (A), Carlo Zappella (A).

The venues of the event are ArtHub, Etaj Artist Run Space, Alert Studio, and 1001 Arte. More details here.

(Opening photo: Yongnian Gui | Dreamstime.com)

simona@romania-insider.com