Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators. - Camus

The following lead to a wide variety of resources dealing with the art of Romania.

Museums and Galleries

Art Diary Internet: Romania *

The world's most complete art directory lists the addresses artists, critics, museums, galleries and other organizations or institutions in Romania and for the rest of the world.

ArtNet Online - Romanian Contemporary Artists *

An online gallery for the collection and promotion of contemporary Romanian artists and their works.

Romania National Art Museum *

The National Museum of Art in Bucharest is Romania's leading art museum housing art from the Middle Ages to the present. This site is also available at http://www.itc.ro/museum/museum.html

Romanian Contemporary Art - Gallery without Walls *

This virtual tour features the works of some of Romania's most famous contemporary artists.

The Fish Pit Computer Art Gallery *

Alexandru Niculita has developed a gathering place for the computer artists of the world to display their works.

The National Brukenthal Museum *

This famous museum is known for its important works of European painters and engravers but also contains the The Library, The Museum of History and The Museum of Natural History. An additional site is http://verena.roknet.ro/brukenthal/index.html . 

Contemporary Artists

Dinu Lazar Photography *

Still life photography for any type of business need is provided in the traditional and digital form.

Nicapetre Homepage *

This site provides a history and collection of the contemporary Romanian born sculptor, Nicapetre.

Sergiu Celibidache; Greatest Performer of Twentieth Century *

This site pays tribute to the Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache who passed away in 1996 at the age of 84.

Vasile Mutu *

A gallery of artist Vasile Mutu's paintings, icons and stained glass.

Performing Artists

Romanian Mozart Society (SRM) *

This society, having its seat in Cluj the SRM was founded 1991, thus becoming the first Mozart Society to be born in the former communist block. Their goal is "to cultivate Mozart's oeuvre and memory in Romania" (#3 of its Statute) and to organize the yearly Cluj Mozart Festivale.

UNITER (Theater Union of Romania) *

The Theater Union of Romania was founded in 1990 to represent the interests of the theater industry. (Also in Romanian)

Fine Arts

In the big ensembles of frescoes dating back to the time when the first Romanian statal formations were getting shape one can recognize, as a constant, the synthesis of some aspirations after integration in the natural order, a synthesis which also contains references to the sacred and to history. In the case of the murals of the monasteries in Northern Moldavia, the painted images wholly cover the walls of the church (inside and outside) in a fluid that provides a bond between the sacred space and the natural environment. The scope and brilliancy of frescoes at the monasteries of Voronet, Moldovita, Sucevita, Arbore, Humor or Patrauti made the great Byzantinist Andre Grabar consider this artistic phenomenon 'an illustrated book open on all its pages'. Great painters worked on these frescoes: Gavril Uric - the first known Romaniain painter, a monk at the Neamt Monastery and author, among other things, of a book of the Four Gospels dating back to 1426, which is preserved today at the Bodleian Library of the Oxford University -, Stefan of Densus (in the Hateg zone), Nicodim the Monk, Gavril the Monk, Spiridon of Putna, Toma of Suceava, a.o.

Preserving the ties with the Byzantine stock, the culture of the Modern Age manifests an increasing tendency to follow the European artistic movements which send in turn echoes of the Renaissance, Romanticist, Academist or Impressionistic trends. After the 1859 union of Wallachia and Moldavia, the foundations were laid in Iasi and Bucharest for the artistic higher education, which would decisively contribute to the development of the arts in Romania.
In an atmosphere long dominated by academic and Romanticist formulas, there emerge the signs of novelty brought by artists frequenting the innovating milieux of Paris and its environs. Nicolae Grigorescu and Ion Andreescu work for a time at Barbizon, alongside the artists who pioneered the Impressionist movement. These two painters and Stefan Luchian - who contributes elements akin to Art Nouveau and expressionism - are the founders of modern Romanian painting. They will be followed, in the first half of the 20th century by great personalities who opened as many new vistas in the Romanian painting. A first generation comprises artists like Theodor Pallady, Gheorghe Petrascu, Nicolae Tonitza, Stefan Dimitrescu, Francisc Sirato, Jean AI. Steriadi, Dumitru Ghiata,
Nicolae Darascu, Lucian Grigorescu, M.H. Maxy, Hans Mattis-Teutsch, Hans Eder, Corneliu Michailescu. Having made their debut before World War II, several artist continue their activity also in the following decades, succeeding - despite all adversities in the postwar totalitarian period - to enhance the substance of the national artistic heritage: Ion Tuculescu, Henri Catargi, Catul Bogdan, Alexandru Ciucurencu, Victor Mihailescu-Craiu, Lucia Dem. Balacescu, Paul Miracovici, Margareta Sterian, Micaela Eleutheriade, Corneliu Baba. Part of the time's outstanding painters worked mostly abroad: Victor Brauner, Marcel Iancu, Eustatiu Stoenescu, Dimitrie Berea, Eugen Drutescu, Alexandru Istrati. There are, then, some artists who still work abroad: Horia Damian, Iosif Iliu, Natalia Dumitrescu, Serban Epure, Petru Hartopeanu, Toma Roata, Dana Roman.
Modern Romanian sculpture has been marked by Constantin Brancusi, the man who initiated the restructuring of the world's sculptural language in this century. Interested in the fundamental problems of form and expression, Brancusi undertakes a careful examination of the cultural precedents, going down to the "dawn of pachetypes" where he discovers the pure, essential and fully significant form. From this trip on the historical vertical, into the horizon of the Neolithic world whose spirit is preserved in folk art, the artist returns to the present, managing to restore, in his works, the bridges of communication so affected by the routine and excesses of the technological era.

If Brancusi revitalized the abstract expression of archaic art, Dimitrie Paciurea heads for those figurative and fantastic mythological representations that have functions in the old symbolical repertories but which still prove to be pertinent. With Gheorghe D. Anghel, Romanian 20th century sculpture regains the purity and severity of the Byzantine form, controlled by a spirit fed classical ideals.