A cubist portrait made from many sessions with the same model — the multiple viewpoints accumulated across different days assembled into a single image in which the model appears to be seen from several positions simultaneously. The sittings were longer than usual, so the assembled portrait is unusually rich in observed material.
The background was given the same fractured treatment as the figure, so that no part of the canvas retreats into spatial neutrality. Figure and ground are equally disrupted, which keeps the entire painting surface active from edge to edge.
About the artist
Lucian Dumitrescu's paintings start from a constraint — a single colour, a single gesture, a self-imposed restriction on what materials can be used — and explore how much can be made within that constraint before it needs to be released. The minimalist works are the clearest expression of this methodology, but the same underlying logic structures even the more figurative and surrealist pieces.
He trained at the Ion Andreescu Academy of Art in Cluj and maintains his studio there. His watercolours are made on location, typically in the Transylvanian highlands, using a restricted palette mixed before leaving the studio and not augmented in the field. He accepts commissions for minimalist and landscape work.
