Brazilian jazzman in Transylvania

On May 20th-21st 2008 I guided the Brazilian musician Marcos Valente Jr. to the city of Reghin, in the core of Transylvania. In order to prepare his Romanian tournée next October, Marcos wanted to visit the most famous factory of musical instruments of the country - Hora - where he chose a special bass for himself. During the trip through the Carpathian mountains, he had several cultural and gastronomical experiences which gave him a general taste of Transylvania.

Easter 2007

During the Christian-orthodox Easter holiday, we guided three ladies from Brazil - Barbara Spanoudis, Marcia Schubert and Oziris Costa - through deep Romania in order to experience the peasants life and their sincere religious feeling. Hosted in Northern Moldavia, they were able to visit several monasteries in Falticeni and Neamt area, as well as the world famous monasteries in Bukovina: Voronet, Moldovita and Humor. In the picture, Oziris and Barbara, in blue pullovers, together with their guides at a traditional family house in Rosiori, Suceava, get warm for Easter mass.

Stefan Hajdu

Ştefan Hajdu (1907-1996), also known as István Hajdú or Étienne Hajdú, was a famous French sculptor of Jewish Hungarian origin, born in the Transylvanian town of Turda, Romania. He studied in Budapest and Vienna and, in 1927, established himself in Paris. His works show a certain influence of Brancusi's aspiration towards pure forms, specially after 1950, when Hajdu starts to develop a very personal style, based on the abstractionism that was already present in his sculptures since 1932. Some of his works can be seen at museums in Paris, Essen, New York, San Francisco, Washington, Bucharest, Budapest and Skopje.

Source: Wikipedia

Romanian "Brother Grimm"

Josef Haltrich (1822-1886), a famous Transylvanian ethnograph, collected and published folk tales from the medieval German area called "Sachsenland", in today's Romania. He was born in Reghin, studied History, Theology and Philology in Leipzig and then lived in Sighisoara, Cluj and Bistrita. Compared to the Brothers Grimm, he is one of the most important folklorists of German culture.

Read here (in German) the folk tales collected by Haltrich.

Source: Wikipedia

Shining through a long, dark night

Every now and then in film a tangible if invisible phenomenon, a “talent cloud,” descends upon a nation, and its filmmakers turn out impressive numbers of wonderful films that reinvigorate the medium. Such has been the case with the remarkable Romanian “new wave” of the past five or six years. After the crowning achievement of last year’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days — winner of both the Grand Prize at Cannes and Felix for Best Film — Romanian cinema has been, deservedly, the talk of critics and bloggers, as well as avid moviegoers.

Yet, few if any movements in film don’t have solid roots in the past. The great achievements of Romania’s emerging filmmakers such as Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu, Ruxandra Zenide were foreshadowed by earlier generations — Liviu Ciulei, Lucian Pintilie, Dan Pita, Mircea Daneliuc, Alexandru Tatos, among others. With Shining Through a Long, Dark Night, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, in collaboration with the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, brings together many of the finest recent Romanian films with a selection of key films from the pre-1989 Romania cinema.

For a listing of the films that will be screened between April 16th and 27th, go to Program Overview.

Source: Film Society of Lincoln Center

Romanian artist promotes MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art from New York hired Dan Perjovschi to create a page promoting the museum for the daily paper The New York Times

The March 12, 2008 edition of the American daily paper includes in the special "Museums" section a page of drawings by Dan Perjovschi. Selected by the Museum of Modern Art to present the image of the institution in this edition of The New York Times, Perjovschi started his work with a modern comment referring to contemporary art and to the manner it is presented today by the great museums (including the Museum of Modern art), a list including "Cubism, Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Modernism, Cafeteria, Shop." Last year, the Museum of Modern Art hosted the first individual exhibition by Dan Perjovschi in the United States, entitled "What Happened to US?" In front of the audience, for several days, Perjovschi sketched graphic comments on the relations between present social and political circumstances and art on one of the walls of the Donald B. & Catherine C. Marron Atrium.

Global warming, violence in schools, freedom of expression and even the role of the United States in the world – were themes of the exhibition presented by Perjovschi at the Museum of Modern Art from Manhattan. In a declaration for HotNews.ro, in April 2007, Dan Perjovschi mentioned:

"All my works are inspired by reality because I follow a line of graphic comment – a highly personal graphic comment. It is not a detached graphic comment, and it is definitely not a comment dedicated to the beautiful side of life or to the things most people consider as beautiful. It is a statement of commitment. I feel like a citizen, not like a bystander. I am a man of the city, and I care about the issues it is dealing with, regardless if this city is New York, Sibiu or Bucharest. Drawing is my personal manner to respond to the city."

Source: Article by George Grigoriu on Nine O'Clock

György Ligeti

The famous Hungarian composer György Ligeti (1923-2006) was born in the Transylvanian town of Târnaveni, Romania, to a Hungarian Jewish family. Ligeti recalls that his first exposure to languages other than Hungarian came one day while listening to a conversation among the Romanian-speaking town police. Before that he hadn't known that other languages existed. He moved to the important Transylvanian city of Cluj with his family when he was 6 and he was not to return to his birth town until the 1990s. Ligeti received his initial musical training at the Cluj Conservatory. His education was interrupted in 1943 when, as a Jew, he was forced to labor by the Nazis. His brother, at the age of 16, was deported to Mauthausen; his parents were both sent to Auschwitz. Following the war, Ligeti returned to his studies in Budapest, graduating in 1949. In December of 1956, two months after the Hungarian revolution was put down by the Soviet Army, he fled first to Vienna and eventually took Austrian citizenship. Many of his works are well known in classical music circles, but to the general public, he is best known for the various pieces featured in the Stanley Kubrick films 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut.

Source: Wikipedia

Wirtzbaum

In the period 6th-13th September 2001, we guided Albert Wirtzbaum (US) through several places in Romania, so that he could find information of his ancestrals, who used to live in different shtetls in the area of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and were called Wirtzbaum, Solomon, Blau, Friedman and Fried. The main places of his trip were Bucharest, Sighisoara, Cluj-Napoca (synagogue on the picture) and Oradea. In Transylvania he visited the shtetls Borod, Cornicel, Solduba and Saldabagiu de Munte, and was received as well by the Jewish genealogy specialist Peter Winter. Because of the 9/11 events, he got stuck in Bucharest and we've assisted him in his prolongated stay.

"Je préfère mon nouveau dégoût à l'ancien goût dégoûtant"

Born into a Jewish family in Botosani, northeastern Romania, Isidore Isou (born Ioan Isidor Goldstein, 1925-2007) started his career as an avant-garde art journalist during World War II. With the future social psychologist Serge Moscovici, he founded the magazine Da, which was soon after closed down by the Romanian authorities. He then moved to Paris, having developed many concepts that intended as a total artistic renewing starting from their lower levels. He called himself a Lettriste, a movement of which he was initially the only member (at the age of 16 he had published the Manifesto in 1942) and published a system of Lettrist hypergraphics. Others soon joined him, and the movement continues to grow, albeit at times under a confusing number of different names.

Source: Wikipedia

Brancusi: the best artist of the 20th century

On March 17th in the morning, Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi was on the leading position of the chart of the most significant 500 Artists of the 20th century, published on the site of the famous Saatchi Gallery from the United Kingdom, based on votes by internet users. On Monday, Constantin Brancusi totalized 27,099 votes, that set him on the first place, followed by Pablo Picasso (13,713 votes), Egon Schiele (13,572 votes), Paul Cezanne (13,568 votes), Claude Monet (13,088 votes), Gustav Klimt (13,016 votes), Paul Gauguin (12,957 votes), Henri Matisse (12,941 votes), Marcel Duchamp (12,925 votes) and Pier Mondrian (12,912 votes). Last week, Brancusi was on the 35th position of the chart, and the Austrian Egon Schiele, French Paul Cezanne and Pablo Picasso from Spain were on the leading positions. The same chart includes the Romanian painter of Jewish ethnicity Victor Brauner, currently on the 302 position, with 3,997 votes. Any visitor of the Saatchi Gallery website may cast only one vote for his favourite artist. The “Best 500 Artists of the 20th Century” Chart is inspired from “The 20th Century Art Book”, an album released by the Phaidon Publishing House.

Source: Nine O'Clock

Maramures guidebook

The Finnish publishing house Metaneira has just launched the most detailed travel guide to Romania's region of wooden churches: Maramures.

The travel guide with more than 750 full-color photographs, 100 drawings and 24 maps shows the best of this little known corner of northern Romania. Geographic and historic overviews with plans, maps and timelines are followed by a portrayal of the traditional way of life and the wooden architecture typical to the region.

Photographs, drawings and texts guide the reader through 500 pages around 47 wooden churches built in the Maramuresean gothic style. Due to their uniqueness, eight of them are on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Cornblum & Alter

In the period October 3-8, 2004, we guided Martin and Rebecca Rosenblum (US), father and daughter, through Bucharest, Focsani, Iasi and Podu Iloaiei, back to their Moldavian roots. They were able to meet with the Jewish Community and visit all Jewish sites in Iasi and Focsani, as well as the Jewish cemetery in Podu Iloaiei. They were also allowed to research at the National Archives in Iasi about their relative families Cornblum and Alter (photo). In Focsani they located a family house and even talked to old neighbors who had known their relatives.