Ion Theodorescu-Sion was a Romanian painter and draftsman, known for his contributions to modern art.
Background
Ion Theodorescu-Sion was born on January 2, 1882 in Ianca, Braila, Romania. The son of a Romanian Railways brakeman and the peasant-woman Ioana Ursu.
Ion spent his early childhood on the Bărăgan Plain, but grew up into a passionate hiker of the Carpathian Mountains.
Education
In 1894, having attended primary and secondary school in the Danube port of Brăila, Ion left for Bucharest to study at the National School of Fine Arts, and graduated in 1897. He consequently was enlisted at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, studying under academic masters Jean-Paul Laurens and Luc-Olivier Merson.
Career
Theodorescu-Sion, still heavily indebted to the work of Henri Fantin-Latour, was focused on creating Symbolist compositions with trees between 1908 and 1915.
Theodorescu-Sion's palette was interchangeably post-Impressionist, Divisionist, Realist, Symbolist, Synthetist, Fauve or Cubist, but his creation had one major ideological focus: depicting peasant life in its natural setting. In time, Sion contributed to the generational goal of creating a specifically Romanian modern art, located at the intersection of folk tradition, primitivist tendencies borrowed from the West, and 20th-century agrarian politics.
In 1913 his featured paintings included a rendition of the Crucifixion and melancholic depictions of solitary shepherds. Theodorescu-Sion had his first personal exhibition at the Romanian Atheneum. From the mid to late 1910s, Sion was commissioned as a war artist, after which his standing increased. His paintings alternated the monumental depictions of harsh rural environments, and their inhabitants, with luminous Balcic seascapes and nostalgic records of suburban life.
The 1920s were a new period of synthesis in Theodorescu-Sion's life, as he became the artistic exponent of a neo-traditionalist movement centered on Gândirea magazine.
Of all the paintings he presented for the public during the Ileana Gallery Art Show in 1925, the vast majority were landscapes of the mountains, or compositions with shepherds and mountain-folk such as "La isvorul Troiței" ("At the Trinity Spring"), alternating with new Balcic seascapes.
Around 1927, Theodorescu-Sion was again concentrating on his murals: his only works at the Official Salon for that year were studies for a wall painting called "Șipotul" ("Gushing Spring"). Returning to Constanța in 1928, he helped organize an official art show to mark the semicentennial of Romanian rule over that region. His own paintings were selected to represent Romanian art at Expo 1929 in Barcelona, Spain, and was part of the 1930 international exhibits in The Hague and Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Moreover, Theodorescu-Sion contributed to the 1934 exhibit "Peisajul bucureștean" ("The Landscape of Bucharest"), with paintings dating back to 1919. A year later he had a retrospective show at Dalles.
In 1937 he was one of the artists involved in decorating the Bucharest Royal Palace (National Museum of Art), and was registered as a state-approved church muralist by government ordinance.
Theodorescu-Sion died on March 31, 1939, in Bucharest, Romania, and was buried in a Bellu cemetery crypt.
Religion
Theodorescu-Sion was baptized into the Romanian Orthodox Church.
Membership
Theodorescu-Sion was a founding member of the Balcic painters' community. He was also one of the founding members of the Artists' Society, a leading Romanian professional association.
In 1921 Sion was also a co-founder and member of Romania's first artists' trade union (Sindicatul Artelor Frumoase).
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
George Murnu: "Teodorescu Sion is a new talent that ought to work hard before reaching the profundity of observation which makes one an artist. He is altogether too preoccupied with technical matters and too superficial in his drawing."
G. Duma: "Theodorescu-Sion's art is the echo of a people's feelings. It is the atavism of our purest art. The artist creates, and the people he represents lives on through him, making it known to all other nations with definitive characteristics that the sources of its own dreams are coming to light under a creative power. One feels spiritually connected to Theodorescu-Sion, because one finds, buried into his pastures, the labor and suffering of a race that has produced the painter himself."
Tăslăuanu: "Mr. Theodorescu-Sion's art doesn't agree with all people on first impression. The primitive and decorative genre, with simple lines and expressive planes, has not won it many adherents. His way of seeing and rendering things seen relates him to the modern art of other countries. However, his canvasses are like those women who do not seek to please the eye and to resemble others. Once you get close to them, once you get to know them and study them, you fall under the spell of their profound simplicity and beauty."