24 Arguments | Early Encounters in Romanian Neo-Avant-Garde 1969–1971
7 November 2019 - 2 February 2020
The National Museum of Art of Romania, National Gallery (ground floor), 49–53 Calea Victoriei, Bucharest
Visiting hours: Wednesday - Sunday, 10.00 - 18.00 (last entry: 17.00)
Horia Bernea, Ion Bitzan, Liviu Ciulei, Radu Dragomirescu, Șerban Epure, Pavel Ilie, Ritzi Jacobi, Peter Jacobi, Ovidiu Maitec, Paul Neagu, Miriam Răducanu, Diet Sayler, Radu Stoica, Vladimir Șetran, Grupul Sigma
The exhibition “24 Arguments. Early Encounters in Romanian Neo-Avant-Garde 1969–1971” is organised by the Institute of the Present and the National Museum of Art of Romania, in partnership with the British Council. Proposing a new working format, that of the exhibition-file, “24 Arguments” starts from a research conducted in the Demarco archives from Edinburgh which retrospectively reveals the presence in the local field of art of a series of forgotten narratives, some fragmented, other impossible to reassemble in their temporal unfolding. Such narratives have, however, the capacity to evoke the existence of certain discontinuities in the apparently homogenous structure of the cultural landscape of the time, of certain trans-national zones of contact and transfer not only with the Western space, but also with the space of other Socialist worlds.
Starting from the interest manifested by the Scottish promoter Richard Demarco in establishing a dialogue with the artistic milieus of Eastern Europe, initiated with the opening in October 1967, at the Demarco Gallery, of the first exhibition dedicated to art from the region, “16 Polish Painters” and, particularly, with Romania, on his first visit from September 1968, the exhibition centres upon a moment in time when history seemed to change its course and which, unexpectedly, locates, at regional and international level, the experiences of Romanian Neo-Avant-Garde at the end of the 1960s and in the beginning of the 1970s.
The benchmarks are provided by the itineration of the exhibition “4 Romanian Artists” (Ion Bitzan, Ritzi Jacobi, Peter Jacobi, Paul Neagu), in 1969, from Bauzentrum Hamburg to the Demarco Gallery and by setting up the exhibition “Romanian Art Today”, within the 1971 Edinburgh Festival, designed in association with events dedicated to the latest explorations in the contemporary Romanian theatre, poetry and dance.