Untitled (from the Amerim series) 1997

Vasile Dobrian made this untitled print sometime during his Amerim series, probably using a stencil or some kind of manual printing press. It looks like a memory of a landscape, distilled to its barest elements. I can imagine Dobrian in his studio, layering the shapes, adjusting the colours, trying to get the balance just right. The fuzzy blue rectangle acting as a sky, setting off the flat burnt-orange circle, that sits just so. Above that a band of colour, maybe a field, maybe a road. I wonder if he was thinking of other painters like Milton Avery, stripping scenes back to their basic forms. Maybe he was aiming for that sense of quiet contemplation. These painters are all in conversation, across time and place. They share a language of form and colour, a way of seeing and feeling the world. It’s all there in this little print, waiting for you to discover it.