Composition 1989

This ‘Composition’ by Vasile Dobrian is a world of yellow, brown, and grey shapes that interlock and overlap. I can imagine Dobrian building this up slowly, maybe even tentatively, letting one shape suggest another. There’s something so satisfying about how the colors interact—that muted grey against the warm yellows and browns—the whole palette feels like a memory. I really sympathize with how hard it can be to create structure within a painting and to give it a sense of purpose. There’s an ongoing conversation among painters across time, an exchange of ideas that inspires our creativity. This piece embraces ambiguity, inviting multiple interpretations without settling on one definitive meaning. It reminds me a bit of some early modernists and their interest in distilling form, but here, it’s done with a kind of quiet, personal touch.