Galeria Romană presents ”Grădinărirea omului” a retrospective exhibition of the artist Dorel Zaica.
The opening will take place on Tuesday, June 20, 2023, starting at 7 p.m. The art historian Alina Șerban will speak at the opening.
“Dorel Zaica’s painting is the projection of a serious meditation on the human condition. Not in its abstract meanings, but in the tragic forms of our recent history. The history of an oppressed country is crushed by the political, social, and moral pressure of an inhuman force. Pain is concentrated here in images that comment, in clear metaphors, on the universe of which the artist himself is a part.
They are the forms of beginnings, stone and earth (especially stone): here, in the ancient layers of culture, the painter finds the strength to resist adversity, to create a world of hope.
In the horizons of a tragic world, Dorel Zaica tries to rediscover the foundations of a steadfast trust in the destiny of mankind.” (Dan Grigorescu)
“Without confessional coloration, without incense-stained theses and with barely camouflaged vanities, Dorel Zaica’s art, his painting, in particular, is part of a broader spiritualist trend, in which the fundamental stake is not the proclamation of a certain type of faith, but the reconstruction of the links between man and the heavenly hierarchies.
The plastic reflex of such an attitude is the warm rigor of the forms, the beauty of the proportions, the chromatic refinement and, last but not least, the ineffable halo that envelops each composition and which, as is to be expected, only the direct gaze can identify and assume until at the end.
If we were to look for a register in which this painting could be registered and defined, it would be found in the alchemical process of converting matter into light. And Dorel Zaica settled there: between matter and light.” (Pavel Şuşara).
“He learns by teaching others, he fulfills himself as an artist by modeling the fulfillment of others. Dorel Zaica has been, for a long time, the most important and original figure of artistic pedagogy in Romania. Specialized in the education of school-aged children, therefore in a field that requires, more than others, ingenuity, psychological finesse, and patience, he is not content to transmit simple craft elements, but seeks to stimulate the students’ creativity, appealing to their instinct playful, to their innocent audacity, to the freshness of their life experience.” (Andrei Pleșu)
The exhibition is open from June 20 to July 20, 2023. Admission is free.
Visiting hours: Monday – Friday: 10:00 – 18:00, Saturday: 10:00 – 15:00
Short biography
Dorel ZAICA (b. 1939, Bucharest) is a painter, graphic artist, and writer. He graduated from the “Nicolae Grigorescu” Institute of Fine Arts.
He debuted in 1965 alongside Horia Bernea, Paul Neagu, and Virgil Ghinea in a collective exhibition within the Cenacle of the Youth of the Union of Visual Artists.
Between 1965 and 1978 he was a drawing teacher at General School no. 84 from Bucharest. In 1968 he became a member of the Union of Visual Artists from Romania, the easel painting section.
From 1978 to 2000 he taught drawing and painting at the “Nicolae Tonitza High School of Fine Arts” in Bucharest and was director of the high school between 1990-1992. Dorel Zaica is the initiator of the Zaica pedagogical method.
Between 1978 – 1986 he coordinated the Painting Studio at the Collections Museum.
In 2002, he was decorated by the Government Decree of the State of the Federative Republic of Brazil, for artistic and didactic activity within the “Dream Factory” program (Brazil – Romania Foundation).
He participated in numerous personal and group exhibitions both in the country and abroad.
Partners: Catena pentru artă, Evenimentul Zilei, Senso Tv, Intell News, Modernism, Agenția pentru carte, Ultima Oră, Curatorial.ro, Empower Artists, TVR 1, TVR Cultural, Propagarta, Uniunea Artiștilor Plastici din România, Nine O’Clock.
