Still Life With Grapes and Flowers 

Curator: Alright, let’s turn our attention to this playful composition. It's called "Still Life With Grapes and Flowers," by Constantin Piliuta. Sadly we don't have a precise date. It's an oil painting rendered with visible, almost tactile, impasto brushstrokes. Editor: Immediately I get a summery vibe – bright, bold, slightly naive, wouldn't you say? It's like a child's drawing, but executed with the confidence of a trained hand. There’s a sweetness to the color palette as well. Curator: I agree about the summertime feel. I find Piliuta's combination of figuration and abstraction really compelling. It has clear motifs – the watermelon slices, the grapes, a vase of sunflowers – yet it teeters on the edge of dissolving into pure shape and color. I find myself asking what these elements meant to him, in a symbolic sense. Is there anything specific in Romanian visual culture related to these particular fruit? Editor: Maybe. Or maybe it was a beautiful day at his house, he looked at that table arrangement, and said: I wanna squeeze the life out of it! I sense that freedom of expression… it almost laughs at you. There’s that tension that holds abstraction to recognizable subject matter. He holds both playfully in his hand... That yellow against that juicy red - and a pale rose background - is just stunning! Curator: Indeed! The interplay of the abstract and representational pulls us in different directions. Does the looseness signify a turn away from traditional, academic approaches to still life? The flowers almost appear as solar symbols as well. Considering the style, maybe it reflects an interest in bringing the outside in and hinting to a type of warmth, a time in Romania before it transformed and grew cold under totalitarian regimes. The fruit itself becomes almost secondary, the idea being that all life is but a flash, soon to perish. It can be quite profound if you allow it. Editor: I can feel that somber undercurrent, beneath all the fun and the impasto fireworks. All painting IS a dance with death if you think of it: we seize a moment, a sensation. It makes this still life feel less... still. There is the passing of things hinted within all these dabs of color, and that’s actually a lot deeper and truer to me than a purely photo-realistic depiction could ever achieve. Curator: Well said! I'll remember to think about this duality the next time I see this artwork. Editor: Me too. Cheers!