Romanian painter. Between 1926 and 1930 he took courses at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy and, in parallel, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest; between 1934-1938 he attended N.N. Tonitza's courses at the Fine Arts Academy in Jassy. His paintings were on the cyma of the most important art exhibitions organized in the country. He also participated in remarkable art events abroad: the Venice Biennial (1954, 1956), the "Non-abstract Art" Exhibition in Tokyo (1964), exhibitions in Berlin (1964), New York (1970), Bucharest (1978), Moscow, Vienna, Leningrad (1979).
Awards: State Prize (1953, 1954), Golden Medal at the Warsaw International Exhibition (1955), Golden Medal at the Leipzig Book Illustration International Exhibition (1960), Prize for Portrait at the International Triennial for Committed Art -Sofia (1973); Honoured Master of Arts (1958), Honorary Member of the USSR Arts Academy (1968), People's Artist of Romania (1962), Corresponding Member of the Romanian Academy (1963), Corresponding Member of the Fine Arts Academy in Berlin (1964), Member of the "Tommaso Campanella" Academy in Rome (1970), etc. Professor in Jassy (1946) and in Bucharest (1958).
Baba's first creations should be defined considering the two divergent artistic trends of the time. For almost a decade (1940-1950), over which the artist was looking for his own ideal, Baba had to resist both the phenomenon of image dispersion and disappearance and the phenomenon of artistic language rigidness in neoacademic and conventional patterns. Baba succeeded to escape this simplifying opposition in that he did not assume any of the stances leading to a natural joining of the reality and innovation in artistic expression. He stuck to the values which the great traditions of painting imposed, the classical values.
The peasant's countenance and inner life as a symbol of eternity are Baba's revelations in some of the paintings Intoarcerea de la sapa/Coming back from hoeing, 1943; Tarani/Peasants, 1953 Odihna pe camp/A rest in the field, 1954; Oameni odihnindu-se/People at rest
Vaguely intriguing the on-looker, Baba knows how to withstand the preconception of an idyllic and anacronistic village. He brings to life outspoken and highly spiritual people. The scenes depicted are by no means anecdotical: peasants' gestures and attitudes are part of a daily ritual, to be ever repeated, the ritual of living in a microcosm dominated by well -established and immovable laws.
It was in the sixties when Baba's pictures, in contrast to a plethora of rhetorical and exclamatory pictorial representations, shocked with their verity and naturalness. His portraits of steelworkers, done as profoundly human as those of peasants, celebrities and unknown people, as his self-portraits, reveal the human beings' inner life in a dispensation of exterior gestures. The way he chose his subjects, but mostly the manner in which he painted were his vow to eternal ideals in the history of painting. His paintings composition complied to rules almost as strict as those observed by the Renaissance and Post-Renaissance painters. He always imagined in stable geometrical structures. His characters' defining lines if either brought to a focal point or drawn pyramid-like, would eventually converge harmoniously. By calming down the diagonals' temptation for going upwards or downwards, the entire composition would be kept in balance . Once obtained the stability of his composition - the plenitude which the picture insinuates to its viewer - , modalities would be looked for to enliven the image on the canvas .
Inspired by the baroque painting, Baba used light and shadow technique to put a face or a body into bold relief (see "Arlechino" and "The Fool King" series of pictures). Done in oil colours- capable of stirring sensations-, the paintings are intricate zones of shadow and light. So are the portraits of Mihail Sadoveanu, K. H. Zambaccian, Lucia Sturdza-Bulandra, George Enescu, Tudor Arghezi - famous Romanian men and women of culture, and the Venice and Spain landscapes -which Baba was fascinated with.

The writer Mihail Sadoveanu / Scriitorul Mihail Sadoveanu

Enescu (1957)

Last update: 2004, October 25
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