Delamare-Atanasiu---Lumea-de-semne-(3)

Ioan Delamare Atanasiu – A Meta Iconography Speech

No.4 / May 2019

Mihai Plămădeală, art critic – article based on the 2017 ICR Beijing Conference – “Romanian Graphics of the Last Half Century. Four Generations of Artists”

 

 

Professor at the National University of Arts, Ioan Atanasiu Delamare was one of the most important Romanian graphic designers, continuator of an unique graphical style, inherited from his teachers, Octav Grigorescu and Vasile Kazar.

The creation of the great illustrator prematurely disappeared (1955 – 2015), reality and free interpretation overlap into design, up to identification. But, the artistic result belong to a completely different area than that which transpires from the stated perspective: it is about simultaneous narratives. Time was deliberately suppressed, as well as any causal relationship, from what we see, the world that fully establishes through the triumph and exaltation of the line belonging exclusively to the visual.

 

Ioan Delamare Atanasiu - Lumea de semne
Ioan Delamare Atanasiu – Lumea de semne

We are dealing with a pseudo or maybe meta iconography speech. The oneiric component blends with the anecdotal, in the spirit of laws of composition that finds all the reading keys and passwords in sight. What matters is the whole, given that parts tend to individually negotiate their hierarchy. Atanasiu’s universe is without solution of transcendence through internal means, in terms of literary interpretations.      

 

Ioan Delamare Atanasiu - Lumea de semne
Ioan Delamare Atanasiu – Lumea de semne

From a morphological perspective, Ioan Delamare Atanasiu draws recognizable images that inspire confidence, bizarrely related and placed in a general context that exceeds the horizon of expectations of the viewer. The parallels between the world upside down, illustrated without the fundamental carnivalesque component and Judgement, stripped of the main attribute, the eschatological one, determine a possible iconographic area. Little things, ordinary attitudes, profane, are portrayed in perfect simultaneity, the anthropomorphic character being frequently present. The joy of the eye is a challenge in itself, that does not conflict with the intellectual side of the reception.

 

Ioan Delamare Atanasiu – Lumea de semne

The possible anguish of the reception is mitigated by the meticulous organization of the work field. Viewer’s vantage point reserved by the work itself, makes it able to benefit from a series of ontological privilege over those portrayed, but insufficient to solve the mystery. The artist accredits the idea that it would work with a number of truths that no one fully knows and that the path he follows is universally recognized. The restriction of information leads, paradoxically, to a great field of maneuver in the realm of imagination.

The artist portrays both existing and imaginary things. Lines without any material correspondent, at least in the manner of their representation, are opposing to reality. This does not have a purpose, but brings satisfaction in itself. The unmistakable graphics world of Ioan Delamare Atanasiu, for we are dealing with such a world, endowed with the laws of composition both personal and viable, it consists of signs that keep their relative autonomy from the structures to which they belong. The universe of the artist is opened by what at first glance seems hidden.

 

Mihai Plămădeală și Ioan Delamare Atanasiu
Mihai Plămădeală și Ioan Delamare Atanasiu

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