MODERNITY AND PRIVATE PATRONAGE IN THE ARTS
MODERNITY AND PRIVATE PATRONAGE IN THE ARTS
Between the Donation of “Virgil Cioflec” Collection to “King Ferdinand I” University in Cluj and the Exile of Romanian Avant-garde
Series of conferences held by Phd. Camelia Dana Darie and organized by The Art Museum in Cluj-Napoca (MACN), in partnership with The Italian-Romanian Institute of Historical Studies
Conference Host: Alexandra Sârbu, curator
CONFERENCE PROGRAM:
Virgil Cioflec, writer and art collector: From “Artistic Youth” Society to the achievement of the “Romanian Art Collection” (1901 - 1930)
Thursday 12 December 2024, 17:00
The primary position of “V. Cioflec Pinacothèque” among the Collections of “King Ferdinand I” University in Cluj, forebear of “Babeș-Bolyai” University, and its expansion through acquisition politics (1930 - 1940)
Thursday 30 January 2025, 17:00
Victor Brauner in North-American Collections: The Menil Collection in Houston and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York, Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice (1947 - 1988)
Thursday 27 February 2025, 17:00
Free access. Seats are subject to availability.
The conference will be held in Romanian.
This series of conferences is concerned with an essential theme in Art History over centuries: private patronage, here in connection with modernity. Its most peculiar characteristic being the following of the concept in two completely different environments, at national and international level, with their proper specificities, which intertwine in the attainment of the depicted art collections.
The first two conferences of the series take equally into consideration the personality of Virgil Cioflec (1874-1948) and the Collection he established. The first conference brings to light his formative influence on the artistic milieu of the Kingdom of Romania, between 1901 and 1930, through constant support given to “Artistic Youth” Society in the way of collecting contemporary Romanian artists.
The second conference highlights new aspects of his cultural approach by focusing interest in the Transylvanian context at the time from two convergent points of view: of filiation as Cioflec family is of Transylvanian extraction and of political option as Transylvania has been relatively recent incorporated into the Kingdom of Romania. As in the case of his association with the “Artistic Youth” Society, under the auspices of Queen Marie of Romania, through the donation of his Art Collection to “King Ferdinand I” University in Cluj, Virgil Cioflec contributed to the monarchic programme of modernisation of Romanian society based on an Occidental model. Ștefan Bezdechi, the then director of the Institute of Classical Studies at the University, gratefully described this collection as “the first and only Romanian pinacothèque, not only in Cluj, but in all Transylvania”. Professor Virgil Vătășianu, at that time in between the first two research stages (1930-31 and 1934-36) at the Academia di Romania in Rome, concluded the first exegesis of “Virgil Cioflec” Collection that assembles Romanian artists, graduates of major European Beaux-Arts Schools, predominantly in Paris, including the pleinair Barbizon School, and München. To name them: Nicolae Grigorescu, Ștefan Luchian, Dimitrie Paciurea, Nicolae Vermont, Sava Henția, Camil Ressu, Nicolae Tonitza, Iosif Iser and others with an occasional presence in the original collection and its further development in Cluj. Virgil Cioflec was their contemporary, as a friend and financial supporter of their carriers.
This analysis of “Virgil Cioflec” Collection on the background of interwar realities, after its instalment in Cluj, aims to reconfigure a period of cultural history of Cluj, which underwent effacement during the communist experiment and its aftermath.
In counterbalance to addressing Neoclassicism, Realism, Impressionism and Expressionism displayed within the “Virgil Cioflec” Collection, the third conference centres on Victor Brauner’s artistic production from his French phase as an important figure of Surrealism. In this case, two are the main Art Collections, both set up soon after the World War II, which have had a significant role in the financial support of his carrier: Dominique and John de Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, and Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York. The approach to Brauner’s artwork will follow the accession of his pieces of art to these collections and will reveal the inherent themes of Surrealism, which underpinned their acquisition.
Camelia Dana Darie is an art historian. She was awarded her PhD degree in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester with the thesis Victor Brauner and the Surrealist Interest in the Occult. Her research is published by the University of Manchester and by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, the latter in the form of a book chapter titled “Victor Brauner and the Surrealist Claim on fantastique noir Imagery” in Gothic Legacies: Four Centuries of Tradition and Innovation in Art and Architecture, L. Cleaver & A. Lepine (eds.). She has presented her research at the second Conference of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism (ISSS), College of Humanities, University of Exeter, UK, 2019, and at the sixth and the ninth International Conference of The European Network for Avant-garde and Modernism Studies (EAM), Germanistisches Institut, Universität Münster, 2018, and Jagiellonian University, Kraków, 2024. Her interest in Contemporary Art is expressed in the latest Cecile Elstein: Catalogue Raisonné, 1960-2018, Cecile Elstein, Camelia Darie (eds.), Catalogue Raisonnés in Preparation, International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR), New York (NY), USA.
Prior to her research in England she was the recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship in Art History at the Accademia di Romania in Rome, Italy. She researched Early and High Renaissance Art in the Duchy of Mantua, and also curated Italian Contemporary Art exhibitions and published related exhibition catalogues at the Art Gallery of the Accademia di Romania a Roma.
