Page 13 - SUMMARIES OF GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO’S DECAMEON : A Visionary Journey In 100 Stories And 100 Etchings By Petru Russu

His sheets are precious for their vivid, but softened chromatic dedicated to Calendrino, with all those lamentable cases that
that insinuates among the spaces made by a skillful etching mark Boccaccio assigns him. It is a mechanism comparable to some
aware of the expressive qualities of that medium. In front of Petru tendencies of modern art: the mechanical anatomy of Francis

Russu’s engravings, we have the sensation of being in the front Picabia’s drawings, Marcel Duchamp, the facetious combination of
of ancient miniatures, singularly “oriental”, suddenly animated Jean Tinguely and Bernhard Luginbühl, where the sense of humor

by tensions enchantments, empiric but actual starts and plots. doesn’t exclude an accent of restlessness.
Undoubtedly, there is a surrealist component in Petru Russu’s
figurative world that gives to the author the freedom to reach a
In Petru Russu’s work, these mechanisms are easily comparable to
fantastic dimension as space of visionary revelation - here we
an inner organ. The funnels, the crutches, and all the mechanisms
can’t forget the great lesson of the Romanian Victor Brauner, with
of that artistic tradition become in some of his engravings similar
his peculiar, archetypal surrealism.
to the movement of the watches in Jacques Callot’s engraving,
a world in which this dimension has already gone through the
We spoke about a ”double dimension of technological vulnerability of human nature.
mechanics and organic unity”. Actually, the visionary world of

Petru Russu seems to allude to both those dimension, as two
Here, in his work about Boccaccio’s “Decameron,” he has
competing archetypes in the folds of our reality. They seem to
transferred all his fundamental problems. In fact, when an
be indistinguishable inside his visionary plot, where the explicit
illustrator approaches a masterpiece of the past, it is legitimate
components are just the floating presences of surreal symbolic
that he carries with himself all his cultural background, his
figures. Those dimensions remain at the stage of spheres of
problems, his sensibility.
allusion. They are references of the mechanical plot of our
contemporary world and of the iconic plot that chases us daily.
Petru Russu is a courageous artist. Over the years, his work
But they are even references of a remote organic root, of an
has been characterized by austere and sober solutions, as well
anthropological truth on which are based the motivations of a
as by more provocative, colorful liveliness. All these prolific
visionary symbolism, like Petru Russu’s one.
variations are characterized by two main things: the stimulating
resumption of a great cultural model and the importance of a
Petru Russu comes from Transylvania. His art seems influenced by
certain persistency. The fact that Giovanni Boccaccio was one of
some expressionist masters: Oskar Kokoschka in his best period
the first readers of Homer’s original texts and an artist capable
(1914), with his unique chromaticity and his particular way of
of conjugating the “holy studies” with apparent frivolousness can
considering the space of the page; Wassily Kandinsky, with the
lead, illustrators and artists alike, to assume as a gift this prolific
twisty strength of his image. Consequently, we can easily say that
persistency.
the artistic attitude of Petru Russu is like a sort of dialogue around

the origins of middle European Expressionism. Nevertheless,
An exploration of Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, paired with a critical examination of
here the artist privileges the game among historical-stylistic Dan Haulica, literary essayist, influential art critic, editor, and publisher of the 20th Century
magazine. Haulia also served as president of the International Association of Art Critics
connotations, which overcomes that main quality: suddenly he (AICA) in Paris and of CAMERA, the World Council for Art Editing and Research, with activity
spanning both the United States and Romania.
wants to reach a formal mechanism verifiable in the entire cycle
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