Winter Landscape 1942

Dumitru Ghiatza made this landscape with oil, probably in his studio, attempting to capture a memory or perhaps an imagined space. The painting feels direct, intuitive. I love the surface, which is almost like a fresco in its texture. Look at how the horse in the foreground is constructed with these gestural marks that bring it into being, shifting and emerging through intuition. I imagine Ghiatza layering thin washes of pigment, pushing and pulling the paint, editing and refining the composition in the way all painters do. The architecture is rendered with this childlike directness, and these slabs of pink, which remind me of Morandi. Ghiatza, like all artists, is in an ongoing conversation across time, influencing, and inspiring creativity. Painting is a form of embodied expression, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty and allowing for multiple readings.