Works from different periods of Tonitza’s career on display at the Brukenthal/ photo gallery

Works from the different periods of Nicolae Tonitza’s creative career preserved in the Brukenthal National Museum are part of an exhibition that can be seen during the regular visit.

The museum’s collection contains some of the works exhibited during the artist’s lifetime as part of the “Group of Four”, which took place in Bucharest in 1926. The museum’s collection of drawings also includes portraits made in Balchik in the winter of 1936.

‘Little Girl’s Head’ (1927-1928), oil on cardboard, depicts a child on the brink of adolescence. Here, the painter overpowers decorativist tendencies in favour of interiorizing the character’s specific features.

Besides the paintings “Landscape from Mangalia”, “Red Flowers”, “Woman with Two Children”, a delicate portrait of Eliza Manoliu, the artist’s sister-in-law, was painted in the early period of his creation (ca. 1912).

The exhibition is complemented by a ‘Self-portrait’, oil on canvas, painted in 1910, when the artist was in Paris.

The most expensive Nicolae Tonitza work sold at last year’s Artmark auction, “Maternity,” is on display at the National Art Gallery at 5 Great Square for a year. The work was the most valuable lot in the fall auction “Top 100 Great Masters of Romanian Art” held on October 22, 2024. The oil on cardboard – estimated at €90,000 to €160,000 – was sold for €200,000.

Considered a “true phenomenon” of Romanian painting in the first half of the 20th century, a complex personality, a painter and graphic artist of a special sensibility, an “exceptional artistic temperament”, socially involved through his art and his pedagogical activity, Nicolae Tonitza (1883-1940) occupies a special place in the history of Romanian art, being appreciated by specialists and collectors for the talent and value of his work, for its modernity and originality, and by the public for the emotion that his works trigger in the viewer.