IOANA BATRANU, VALENTINA RUSU CIOBANU

The title of the exhibition autoportret (self-portrait) delves beyond the human image frequently depicted in the paintings, extending its meaning to encompass the intimate perspective of the world reflected in each artist’s work. It comprises a personal gaze on immediate surroundings that carries a universal validity.

The third part of the exhibition brings together two artists who have chosen very different approaches to respond to their reality. While Ioana Batranu frequently portrays interiors devoid of human presence in a neo-expressionist style to evoke a timeless mode of introspection, Valentina Rusu Ciobanu accentuated the contemporality of her subjects through a diverse range of styles.

Ioana Batranu (*1960)

Ioana Batranu’s painted interior spaces executed in a neo-expressionist style, emanate intense warmth at one moment and repulsive coldness at another. Not only through the absence of human characters do Batranus’s interiors evoke a palpable sense of existential emptiness, making human existence within their environment almost impossible. Yet beyond visible abandonment, there exists the subtle suggestion of a mysterious presence waiting to be discovered.

For Ioana Batranu, her perception of reality represents the crucial impetus for her painting. The artist, who turned away from contemporary currents since her debut in the 1980s, reflects in her paintings only what she experiences, feels, and is challenged by in life. Sensations of melancholy and alienation appear as internalised experiences. The recurring themes—Melancholic Interiors, Enclosed Gardens, and Latrines—coalesce into an image of her personal concern: the search for the point where the break with the world and the attempt to make peace with it are simultaneous in her existence.

Valentina Rusu Ciobanu (1920-2021)

Valentina Rusu Ciobanu, a prominent figure in Moldovan art history, was born in 1920 in Chisinau, in present-day Moldova. Growing up in the cultural upheaval of the interwar period, she studied at the renowned Academy of Fine Arts in Iasi and the Ilya Repin Republican School of Fine Arts in Chisinau. Rusu Ciobanu’s works are characterised by remarkable stylistic versatility. Spanning nearly eight decades of artistic creation, her oeuvre includes elements of expressionism and fauvism, as well as photorealism and the playful charm of naive art.

In her series Robots, a series of portraits from the late 1960s, Rusu Ciobanu portrayed her subjects with machinelike characteristics while retaining unmistakable individual details. As a commentary on the Soviet proclamation of “technical-scientific progress,” she deprived the depictions of authentic individuals of their humanity, leaving behind caricatured shells.

What distinguishes Rusu Ciobanu’s work is her relentless pursuit of artistic evolution. With a sensitive perception and critical eye for societal changes, she integrated numerous stylistic elements into her repertoire. It is this playful desire to adapt, transform, and innovate that enabled her to critically position her subjects within their time.