Although he is not very popular today, Constantin Daniel Stahi was an important artist in the 19th century Romania, as he approached a wide choice of themes, subjects and mediums, from painting and drawing to engraving and woodcuts, gaining quickly a well-deserved popularity. Born on November 14th 1844, in 1862 he enrolled at the National School of Fine Arts in Iasi, where he took his first ever painting and drawing lessons., then he moved to Munich, where he discovered the techniques of engraving, which offered him more, many more means to express and give life to his ideas.
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Still Life - Holy Water
C.D. Stahi proved to be a rather prolific artist in his career, for between 1862 - 1909 he produced over 300 drawings of all kinds, from sketches for larger paintings to full-fledged works, ranging from landscapes and portraits to reproductions, still lifes, pastels. He also painted almost 450 works, on various themes, mostly in oil colours, a few dozens copies and many smaller works of art. C.D. Stahi was important due to his many portraits, some of them inspired by the life of the peasantry, others depicting famous people of his time. Further, he would also paint several rural scenes, paying great attention to the varied small items around, ranging from ceramics to folk art, all in a very romantic fashion. He was also interested into genre scenes and still lifes, as well as landscapes, also inspired by an ideal, fairytale rural universe.
The artist also taught at the School of Fine Arts in Iasi, in 1892 - 1902, as a teacher, and later became the headmaster of the institution. As a teacher he was influential, very appreciated by his fellow teacher and the students, and he always tried to create a Romanian modern school of painting, to create a new way of working and creating art, to offer a change. He died in Iasi, in 1920.
Constantin Daniel Stahi is an important Romanian artist of the 19th century due to his dedication to the depiction of rural life - despite the fact that his interpretation was often more than an idilical one - a major portraitist and one of the best Romanian engravers. After learning the basics of this art in Germany, Stahi continued to improve his skill, inovate and use often surprising themes and subjects. He produced several hundreds studies, mainly portraits, proving how interested and almost obsessed he was with the human figure and expressions.
Of great interest are also the still-lifes signed by the artist, in a Western tradition, each composition having several items on display, of various sizes, shapes and colours, in the end achieving an interesting equilibrium.
Photo : wikipedia.org
2008-08-04
