Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
nationalistic than Grigorescu. The symbolist movement was represented by Ion Ţuculescu
(1910-62), who incorporated decorative motifs of Moldavian carpets in his work.
LITERATURE: ROMANIA'S NOBEL LAUREATES
In literature, few modern Romanian writers have managed to break through to a wider international public, but
one notable exception is the German-speaking author Herta Mü ller (b 1953), who won the Nobel Prize for Literat-
ure in 2009. Mü ller grew up in a German-speaking village in the Banat during a time when the German minority
was subject to harsh oppression and deportation. Unsurprisingly, her work centres on the severity of life in com-
munist Romania. She left Romania in 1987 and lives in Berlin. Her books are anything but easy reads, but several
are available in English, including
The Land of Green Plums
(1998),
The Appointment
(2002) and
The Hunger
Angel
(2012).
Any discussion of Romanian Nobel laureates would not be complete without mention of the Holocaust survivor
and acclaimed writer Elie Wiesel, who was born in the northern city of Sighetu Marmaţiei in 1928 and who was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. Wiesel has written 57 books, but he's best known for
Night
, a moving de-
piction of his experiences as a prisoner at the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald concentration camps during
WWII.
Sculpture
Sculpture has been an active art form on the territory of modern Romania since the days
of the ancient Greeks along the Black Sea, and the history and archaeology museums in
Tulcea and Constanţa are filled with these works of antiquity. In more modern times, in
the 19th and 20th centuries, sculpture often took the form of statues of national heroes.
This rigid, didactic statue-making, however, was blown
away in the 20th century by the abstract works of Romanian
master Constantin Brâncuşi (1876-1957). Brâncuşi turned the
world of modern sculpture on its head with his dictum of using
sculpture not to focus on an object's form, but rather its inner
essence. His work is featured at Craiova's Art Museum and
Bucharest's National Art Museum, as well as in a series of
open-air public works at Târgu Jiu, not far from where he was
born.
Contemporary Romanian sculpture got a boost - or perhaps
a setback (depending on your point of view) - by a controver-
sial work unveiled in 2012 at Bucharest's National History
Museum. The bronze statue, by Vasile Gorduz (1931-2008),
Five Great
New Wave
Films
»
Four Months, Three Weeks
and Two Days
(Cristian
Mungiu)
»
Tales from the Golden Age
(Cristian Mungiu)
