Page 7 - The Decameon On 100 Etchings by Petru Russu - A Homage to Giovani Boccaccio

most different subjects-both from a social-historical and facetious combination of Tinguely and Luginbuhl, where the
popular-dialectal point of view-with that distance that sense of humor doesn’t exclude an accent of restlessness.
belongs to the artistic discipline. I think that this example
is very important not only for those who create illustrations In Rusu’s work, these mechanisms are easily comparable
for books, but also for those artists who confront themselves to an inner organ. The funnels, the crutches and all the
with this gigantic masterpieces’ provocation. mechanisms of that artistic tradition become in some of his
engravings similar to the movement of the watches of Callot’s
Boccaccio dominates the subject. He reconsiders the epic engraving, a world in which this dimension has already gone
plot and at the same time, he framed it inside the rigorous through the vulnerability of human nature.
structure of the Decameron, inside sentences where the
liveliness of the quip and of the dialectal allusion obeys the In our technological time, this dimension-both mechanical
discipline of a rhythm. A rhythm, distinguished by participles and organic-perfectly obeys a contemporary attitude. It
with a Latin flavor and by everything that recalls the rules, is not casual in fact, that Petru Rusu has already been
the refined modalities of creating a phrase with nobility, as invited to participate at exhibitions regarding themes
it is in the tradition of the ancient rhetoric. about the contemporary experimentalism: “Space-Mirror”,
“Alternative”; but he has also demonstrated his interest for
This mixture of promiscuous vividness that forms Boccaccio’s that subject in his solo-shows. Undoubtedly, he likes this
subject an-at the same time-of high artistic discipline, it kind of investigation. Here, in his work, about Boccaccio’s
seems to me a theme that deserves consideration from Decameron, he has transferred all his fundamental problems.
anyone who wants to approach this text. It is important to In fact, when an illustrator approaches a masterpiece of
feel pushed to a certain attitude, as Rusu did exhaustively the past, it is legitimate that he carries with himself all his
dealing with the Decameron universe. cultural background, his problems, his sensibility.

Petru Rusu comes from Transylvania. His art seems influenced Petru Rusu is a courageous artist. During the years his
by some expressionist master: Kokoschka in his best period work has been correlated by austere and sober solutions,
(1914), with his unique chromaticity and his particular way of as by more provocative, colorful liveliness. All these
considering the space of the page; Kandinsky, with the twisty prolific variations are characterized by two main things:
strength of this image. Consequently, we can easily say that the stimulating resumption of a great cultural model, the
the artistic attitude of Petru Rusu is like a sort of a dialogue importance of a certain persistency.
around the origins of the middle European Expressionism.
The fact that Boccaccio was one of the first readers of Homer’s
Nevertheless, here the artist privileges the game among original texts and an artist capable to conjugate the “holly studies”
historical-stylistic connotation which overcome that main with an apparent frivolousness, can conduces-as illustrators-to
quality: suddenly he wants to reach a formal mechanism assume as a gift this prolific persistency.
verifiable in the entire cycle dedicated to Calendrino, with
Dan Haulica, literary essayist, art critic, and diplomat, Member of the
all those lamentable cases that Boccaccio assigns him. It is a Romanian Academy, Presidents of AICA, The International Association of Art
mechanism comparable to some tendency of the modern art: Critics, in Paris and of CAMERA, the World Council for Art Editing and
Research, with activity spanning both the United States and Romania.
the mechanic anatomy of Picabia’s drawings, Duchamp, the
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