Exhibitions

In the Media Foyer of the NTB (wing facing the Grand Hotel) you can see a new exhibition: Vasile Velisaratu - scenography.

Starting September 16, 2023, the exhibition season will reopen in the NTB foyer, with the premiere presentation of the costume and set designs of Vasile Velisaratu (1895-1978), former painter and set designer of the National Theatre of Bucharest, a necessary restitution effort thanks to the artist's granddaughter, the sculptor Liana Axinte and his heirs.  In addition to the works from the family archive, an oil painting by the playwright Victor Ion Popa, which is part of the TNB Museum's patrimony, will also be exhibited.

Painter, set designer and graphic artist excelling in metal engraving and color lithography, Vasile Velisaratu studied painting and decorative arts before the First World War, at the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest with G.D. Mirea, Gabriel Popescu, Fritz Stork, D. Paciurea, I.D. Stefanescu. The painter's talent was noticed as a student, being selected in 1914 for the Official Salon where he exhibited drawing and engraving until 1944, in both editions. An artistic personality with ethical and aesthetic principles that were early assumed and expressed, Velisaratu was among the founders of the movements of the Artistic Association (1913-1916), the Autumn Salon Association (1921-1924) and the Syndicate of Fine Arts in 1922, together with Oscar Han, Ion Jalea and others. A prodigious painter, he exhibited 137 works at the Maison d'Art in 1921, which were praised in a review by N. Tonitza. Between 1925 and 1934 he was assistant stage painter at the National Theatre in Bucharest. He exhibited again only in 1935, at the Atheneului Hall, in 1942 at the Dalles Hall and in 1947 at the Italian Bookshop in Bucharest, his last major public exhibition. Totally marginalized in the following decade, excluded from the Union of Plastic Artists in 1960 for not aligning himself with socialist realism, Velisaratu continued to work in his studio, developing at the beginning of the 1960s, in the gouache technique, a unique abstract plastic research inspired by modern music, sometimes reminiscent of the exuberant chromaticism of Robert Delaunay. He continued to paint, restored paintings from great museum collections in Bucharest, frescoes in churches, wrote, translated poetry into French, was a living, high spirit, light for the environment in which he lived.

At the same time as the exhibition opened at the TNB, at the Theodor Pallady Hall of the Romanian Academy Library is presented the exhibition of paintings and graphics Vasile Velisaratu - Restitutio, in collaboration with the Prints Cabinet of the Academy, an exhibition accompanied by a comprehensive album-catalogue that also presents Velisaratu's work as a set designer, coordinated by Liana Axinte and printed with the support of Dr. Mihnea C. Velisaratu, the artist's grandson.

The exhibition at NTB will be open daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Translated by Andreea Codrea-Boeriu