Eugen Raportoru

Eugen Raportoru’s path as an artist is significant in all its nuances, from his encounters with a great painter, a true mentor mentor, when Raportoru was still a teenager, to the late decision late decision at the age of 45 to study painting at the University of University of Bucharest, Romania, at the age of 45. Born in 1961, the Raportoru, born in 1961, is the youngest of eight children, Raportoru knew early on that he wanted to become an artist and tell stories about real real events with a brush on canvas. His mother, a Romni who who experienced the horrors of deportation as a child, was his lighthouse on the sea on the sea when he found himself in the sixties under communism in the the unjust social waters of the Eastern European bloc in the 1960s under communism.

He worked independently, was self-taught, and when he was 45 years old and still not recognised by the local artistic community, he went to college to get his degree at the age of 50. The flow of information he received as he learnt the mechanics of the art world the mechanisms of the art world and broadened his views determined a of decisions in his artistic work. Today Raportoru is pushing the boundaries further and further. In a way some ways he is still in the process of distillation, having experimented with experimenting with Kiefer’s monumental painting, which explores the trauma of the pogroms of the Jewish communities during the Second World War or with Baselitz, who treats large canvases with impetuosity or Kapoor with his monumental biomorphic plaster sculptures. plaster sculptures. He was an enthusiastic lover of the old aesthetic beauty that his older (now deceased) masters had taught him: Flowerpots and romantic landscapes. But his real universe was one of hard struggle, and that is why his landscapes are grey and the flowers hide a certain sadness within them. When he visited the Venice Biennale for the first time in the 2000s, he was enchanted, and he still paints such pictures today. paintings to this day. But every now and then he shows the mahala (neighbourhood) where his soul finds peace, the multi-ethnic social fabric in which neighbours live side by side like one big family and share almost everything as a group: Space, memories and often food. This is his solid ground.

Back to the present: In 2022, on his return after the opening of the Roma Collateral Exhibition in Venice, organised by ERIAC (European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture in Berlin), Raportoru goes into hiding Raportoru goes into hiding and works intensively on Gelem, Gelem, a project that had been in the back of his mind for two years. in the back of his mind for two years. This year marks the 78th anniversary of the horrific events of 2 August 1944, when around 4,300 Sinti and Roma were murdered in the were murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. In two months, Raportoru hangs 12 canvases on the high walls of the Tancred Bănățeanu Hall in the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant, painted in mourning black, on which he tells the truth of the 12 apostolic crosses in a symbolic orthodox Christian key: the truth about the Holocaust of Sinti and Roma. About a taboo, something we don’t talk about. Just like we don’t talk about The 12 canvases treated with layers of brown oil are witnesses to historical abuses with a strong traumatic effect. historical grievances with strong traumatic reverberations for the Roma ethnic group – a cruel reality that is not recognised in his home country is not openly discussed at either institutional or state level in his home country. at institutional or state level. Red and brown are chromatic instances of blood and earth that are fully reflected in the artist’s diagrams.

A large wooden crossbeam and carriage wheels are interlocked in the shape of a crucifix and form the centrepiece of the exhibition exhibition installation – it functions as a reference to the mass mass deportation, which was decided by dictator Antonescu in 1942 and which deported 25,000 deportees from all over Romania to the arid plains of Transnistria. Transnistria. 25,000, only half of whom survived the cold and survived the cold and hunger as they embarked on this long journey without any possessions or security other than hope. Hope for a better life in a foreign country, because the officials had told them repeatedly told them: you don’t need anything, you will be fed and given accommodation. They were promised decency. But all they found was scorching heat and freezing cold and were forced to do hard physical labour with forced to do hard physical labour when food was scarce. Soon Transnistria began to become a mass grave for the entire population. The stories of the survivors from this period are difficult to tell. to tell. The grave site bears witness to the sacrifice of the mothers and families for their youngest children, and it contains candles and Christian icons icons as a re-enactment of a funeral service they did not have.

The deportation in the 1940s remains a sad historical moment, which is depicted in the novel “Șatra” by the Romanian writer Zaharia Stancu from 1968. writer Zaharia Stancu from the year 1968 is a textual depiction of it. is depicted in the text. It describes the turmoil of the young and old Roma and their and their traumatic path to death. The number of victims of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis against the Roma and Sinti amounts to hundreds of thousands, an estimated half a million souls, in addition to the six million Jews.



Ilina Shileru
                                                                                                                                                                           Bucharest, August 2022

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