Case study
Queen Marie of Romania
Bogdan Mihai Radu pays tribute to Queen Maria on the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Royal House of Romania. Generically titled, The Queen's Heart, the exhibition brings to the fore the queen's favorite flowers, developed in skilfully drawn compositions, directly in color.
The artist approaches with pictorial ease bouquets/bundles/surfaces of irises, lilies or roses from the royal gardens of Balcic and Cotroceni. Because he is a fine observer, Bogdan Mihai Radu also captures the galleries of columns, fountains and pots from the props of Queen Maria's gardens.
A symbol of purity and tenderness, enveloped in a fairy tale atmosphere in the Pre-Raphaelite representations and then taken over by Art Nouveau, lilies are taken over iconographically by Bogdan Mihai Radu and developed through an exclusive reminder of color. The Queen's preference for lilies depicted talle-qualle or as decorative elements in the book illustrations for her volumes of stories was also well known.
The gardens and the royal palace at Balcic (which combines the exotic architecture of the minaret with the peasant architecture) are captured by Bogdan in different poses. The artist is persistent in practicing his form memory, opting for different colored versions of the palace: he either opts for sunny colors or colored grays. Bogdan has a real penchant for rendering colored shadows, which brings him closer to the manner of expression of impressionist origins. Conglomerates of color divide the perspective form, and abstract painterly spots take the place of the background.
The framed painting named "Silueta reginei" is part of
the permanent collection of Cotroceni Museum, 2016
Surrounded by the floral repertoire, the Queen's figure always appears shrouded in mystery, melancholy and fairy tale like Pre-Raphaelite paintings. With white clothes or in traditional Romanian attire, the painter captures the melancholic, poetic, solar side of the Queen. His features are not rendered, wide shots draw the face shrouded in mystery, color, patches of shadow and light.
Through this exhibition, Bogdan Mihai Radu proves a real pictorial refinement.
Text by Raluca Baloiu
