A figure painting in the cubist tradition — the harlequin as a subject carries its own pictorial history that the painting is in conversation with rather than trying to escape. The diamond costume pattern provided a ready-made geometric structure that the cubist fragmentation could build upon and complicate.
The palette was kept deliberately restricted — ochre, cadmium red, black, and white — partly in homage to the analytical cubism that informed the work and partly because the costume's own colour demanded to be the dominant note rather than the paint.
About the artist
Victor Radu approaches the language of cubism as a living practice rather than a historical style — the fragmentation of form and simultaneous viewpoints that Picasso and Braque developed remain, for him, the most honest way to represent a world that is never seen from a single fixed position. His paintings apply this logic to unexpected subjects: breakfast tables, railway platforms, workshop interiors.
His mixed media works incorporate found objects alongside paint and collage — things that have already been touched by time carry an authenticity that new materials rarely offer. He is based in Sibiu and accepts commissions for site-specific pieces from collectors prepared to work closely with him on the brief.
