The balance of wood, in the retrospective “Ovidiu Maitec 100”, at Brukenthal/ photo gallery

The Ovidiu Maitec retrospective, dedicated to one of the most innovative figures in post-war Romanian art, 100 years after his birth, can be seen at the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu.

Gates as wings, perforated wood, thrones and containers as functional objects are part of the artist’s creative periods. Maitec sought nobility in wood. “I fell in love and befriended it. It’s a warm material, but also parasitic, if you don’t know it and befriend it. In addition, the wood from Romania – walnut, oak, but especially the goruna – has an expression and a personality in our spirituality. I am not a Brâncușian, that’s clear. But neither can I escape the prestige and shadow of this Oltean. If we are to be loyal, we must say that we owe to him all our essentialization and liberation from figurative conventionality,” he said in a 2000 interview for Jurnal Bihorean.

The project was initiated and coordinated by Dana and Stéphane Maitec, photographers, heirs of the artist and keepers of his work and memory. They spoke at the debate on “Contemporary Art, Heritage and Education” about what it meant for them to be in the sculptures of the great artist.

Stéphane Maitec: “I was 9 years old, I grew up among sculptures. When you’re a child, you try to understand why the sculptor does these things. He was very much influenced by tradition, but especially by elements that are universally valid. For him, the hinge was a universal thing. You find it in Finland, in Sweden. It’s very difficult to say what was in my father’s head when he was making them.”

“An element as simple as a hinge, how can it evoke feelings when interpreted in a work of art? A simple hinge, properly mounted. Why does an artist look for something like that? We’re probably all magnets, really, all of us. We’re inspired by the past and the future, because you can’t live only in the past. You can’t just pass by what is our heritage in this country. But, at the same time, you don’t pass by indifferent when you see the various influences and technical breakthroughs, and maybe for some artists it’s easier to make a friendship between the past and the future. I think Maitec was one of them,” said artist Dana Maitec.

A curatorial approach signed by Irina Ungureanu Sturza, which recontextualizes the work of Ovidiu Maitec in the contemporary artistic landscape.

“He liked that those who visit his studio, to see them all around, to discover for themselves that they have a certain movement and this mascara awakens a certain emotion,” Dana Maitec confessed. “I think that for an artist, this is the greatest joy, to discover that a work of his, which he has built from a personal source, can receive different interpretations. I think it’s very important to find as many hidden or hidden messages as possible”, said Dana Maitec.

The exhibition brings together a representative selection of works from the collection of several romanian museums, from the family collection and from private collections. There is also a reproduction of the sculptor’s studio from 1983, with tools and the walnut ‘Column’ from the Burkenthal Museum collection, as well as the ‘Gate with Signs’ from the MNAR collection.

Made up of symmetrical structures suspended in balance around a pivot and capable of movement, Ovidiu Maitec’s sculptures are gates, birds, wings, hinges, balances, shutters, skylights, pillars, columns, towers, thrones.

“I found the balance of material in space to be one of the main features and difficulties of sculpture,” says the artist.

The exhibition is open to the public until August 30, from Wednesday to Sunday, 10.00-18.00.

Photo credit: curatorial