Illustration for V. Voiculescu's "Last Shakespearean Sonnets" 1982

Curator: So, here we have Margareta Sterian's "Illustration for V. Voiculescu's 'Last Shakespearean Sonnets'," created in 1982. It's an acrylic painting, a swirling world of abstract figuration. What's your immediate take? Editor: Ethereal and melancholy, almost as if figures are emerging or dissolving from a dream. The dark strokes against the light figure on the right are striking. Curator: Indeed. The duality is palpable. Sterian often explored themes of the body and the spiritual through abstraction. Notice how she uses the female nude form. It’s not presented traditionally, but more as an echo. Nudity in art is often charged, and what’s fascinating is that, given the literary reference to Shakespeare, there’s possibly an intended reflection on beauty, mortality and desire. Editor: You know, I'm also picking up a hint of anguish, like figures trapped between worlds. The rough texture, the almost violent brushstrokes, add to that feeling of turmoil, even. Curator: That reminds me that Abstract Expressionism was in part shaped by postwar feelings of anxiety and alienation. She wasn’t part of the main American circles but was contemporaneous. Here we see a possible cultural link manifesting itself. This isn’t just pretty, its layered and burdened with implications of its era. Editor: Absolutely, and thinking of it that way shifts my whole perception. I was caught up in the aesthetics, but it’s way more layered than it first seemed. Curator: Sterian seems to invite us to move beyond mere surface observation, urging us to consider the painting as a kind of symbolic repository. How human figures morph across eras. Editor: It's funny how art pulls you in, isn't it? From an initial mood to a layered understanding in just a few minutes. I'll never look at another "nude" quite the same way. Curator: And that's precisely the magic of her art—endlessly provoking, defying simple definition. It asks us to bring ourselves into the equation.