With a surprising exposition CRISTINA MOVILEANU delighted my soul this springtime (5th-12th of April 2013), a young and gifted paintress, given with a divine blessing, but also with an inheritance of talent from her parent – the regretted plastic artist VASILE MOVILEANU, whom I had known and about whom I had gladly written several times. I had had a beautiful collaboration with him. He had illustrated some children books for me and, thus, I had had the opportunity to be family’s Movileanu guest for a few times. I have discovered a remarkable atmosphere in this house, their home seemed as if it was the residence of love and harmony, and they all shared their time and gave themselves to the close ones. Of course, I have also met the daughters of Ana and Vasile Movileanu. Cristina, a little girl by then, was showing a special interest towards painting, towards her father’s work of creation. I had admired her first drawings. Amongst others, Vasile Movileanu had even told me: “I hope this daughter of mine will follow in my footsteps!” And that is what happened.
Maybe with her father’s will, or rather, God wanted to give wings to his dream through someone close, someone who would tell the world what she sees, but through the chromatic speech, just like he did. “This is what Vasile Movileanu used to do, this is what his daughter started to express too…” – this thought sprouted into my mind while I was at Cristina Movileanu’s opening after I walked along with her paintings, which were exposed in an alluring order, for several times. All her paintings (bigger, smaller, more imposing, shyer…) were impressively festive and various in their message; they were filled with a new, audacious feeling, at the same time revealing a skillful hand and a personal vision of chromatic exposure and expression. I was trying to find an explanation to the thought about the inheritance of talent and about the continuity of an “ancestral” duty towards the art, towards the sublime. I was looking for the answer in Cristina’s works about her father’s native places (“The patriarchal house” , “The cart with the horse by the gateway”), places where she spent her childhood too and where, I suspect, she curiously watched her father as he, just like a magician, caught the moment and eternalized its fulminant passing with the help of his brush.
I have also stopped, fascinated, in front of her works on a more delicate theme – Maternity. Through her works “Mother’s warmth”, “The mother and the child”, with a distinctive woman’s intuition finesse, subtle, but without betraying the mirific through the deep, the paintress expresses the mystery of the Woman – the Mother – the Lover, the Essence of her fate! The paintress caught and expressed the aura that shields the purpose of the mother, the fascinating dance of a woman’s soul which is waiting, is always waiting… With what will this young woman surprise the eye of the world tomorrow, if today she is trying to approach so major, but also so simple subjects; eternal, but also common subjects, so easily passing from one manner to another, from one way of expressing and executing the subject to another… And where from does she get her skills, though?”
As if she had suspected my fretful thought, in her opening speech Cristina Movileanu confessed: “As a little thief I was watching my father work. Both when we were in the countryside and at home – in his workshop-room (because my father never had a proper workshop!), but back then for me it was all just like a game of imitation. This was up until the moment he passed away to another world, to another dimension, when I realized I had lost him, he no longer existed. And then, when I felt abandoned by my guide, something special happened to me. One day, when I walked in his room, in the space that used to belong to him, all of the sudden I felt surrounded by an inexplicable state and I started painting. It was like a mystery! A blessing… It seemed as if someone else was leading my hand and the colors were flowing like a chromatic avalanche. I could not stop… Thus, I have created many works in an incredibly short period of time…” While she was telling this, Cristina’s voice was trembling with emotion and, at some point, she could not hold her tears back any longer. In vain was her beloved son moving all around her with a little toy-car in his hand (trying to cheer her up) – the little grandson of the regretted Vasile Movileanu, whom, unfortunately, he could not get to see. Or maybe he sees him?! Just like maybe he had seen us at Cristina’s opening! I was under the impression that next to the portrait named “Father” is him standing, the artist who passed to the eternal world, there where everything is seen in a different light and where everything has a different value than here in a world of The World. Maybe he had gladly and proudly admired his daughter – “the masterpiece” of his life. With his serene, opened face and his nostalgic, enigmatical smile. This is how Vasile Movileanu was and remained in my memory. Cristina, his beloved daughter, will certainly tell the world through the language of colors what he did not manage to. I am saying that with my whole certitude!