No. 14 / October 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. Another former student of Vasile Kazar, 1963 graduate of the Institute “Nicolae Grigorescu” is Mircia Dumitrescu, academician, doctor honoris causa and professor since 1990 at the same prestigious institution, which became meanwhile the National University of Arts.
Mircia Dumitrescu has put a great deal of his creative energy in the service of books, removing any ambiguity regarding the possibilities for artistic expression in illustration. I start the discussion about the work of Mircia Dumitrescu from illustration since it represents an identity factor for him. The artist found the faultless formula to use literary texts keeping their meaning while leaving image its maximum independence. We are dealing with visual signs rather than with hardened narrative moments. Mircia Dumitrescu’s images have a before and an after; they are the very present, that moment that will not ever end.
Drawing, engraving and sculpture, the latter considered the artist as tridimensional linocut, represents a logical and natural route. Natural is the whole artistic life of Mircia Dumitrescu, a man endowed not only in the graphic sign area, but in the observation also. I talk about observing the surrounding world in the most prosaic sense of the phrase. This horizontal grassroots view, metaphorically speaking, it establishes as foundation of his creation. The ability to see, surprise and transpose in sign, line and point, the chosen subjects, transcends the subjectivity of its personal interpretation. The result is a design somewhat objective in its subjectivity.
Mircia Dumitrescu does not have good moments and bad moments, in terms of creativity. He is always inspired, always has something to say and this is always something else.
Designer’s biography intersects not only with the great Romanian artists, but also with some important poets and writers. Friendships, let’s call them literary, are an active part in the life of Mircia Dumitrescu, a life that coherently finds its extension in his creation. But I do not want to legitimize him by associating with his literate friends. He is exclusively recommended by his creation work.
