Biography
With a “whimsical and moody” temperament, as described by the engraver and painter Alessandro Nocentini, Mihu Vulcanescu is known as a painter, ceramist and graphic designer. A native of Romania, he was born in Bucharest in 1937 and died in his homeland in 1994. he He lived for several years in Florence, alternating his stays between Romania and Tuscany. Of Christian-Orthodox culture and religion, he grew up and trained in Bucharest, arriving in Florence with a work permit, leaving his wife and children in Romania, during the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, with the obligation of periodic returns and checks by the police on the development of his work, a period marked by a strong sense of bitterness. He deeply loved Segovia’s music.
Philosophy
To introduce the artist the words of the critic Tommaso Paloscia: “I know Mihu Vulcanescu and his painting from the first Florentine acquaintances; […] And I know the environmental difficulties (especially economic) that the search for him encountered, who had only in oils and ceramics the tools for an unjustly difficult survival”. Fantasy and language are clearly expressionist. The artist has always worked diligently looking for the power to his drawing and pictorial vein from Tuscan art, especially in a surrealist transposition on ceramics through a revisited traditional iconography. Mihu Vulcanescu, however, started from a generalised naturalism. In the drawings and engravings, his cultural and professional preparation has been influenced by Brancusi’s drawings and, in particular, by the influence of his compatriot Tristan Tzara: “The result is a story in which the indications of tradition enjoy the respect which it owes follow every renovation project. The Romanian painter, never denying the great cultural values of his own country, has been able to insert over time the values offered to him by a Florence”, to use Paloscia’s own words.
Artwork in Castagno
Dittico (Diptych) at Casa Paloscia in La Vigna is a clear example of Mihu Vulcanescu’s ceramics defined as “modern icons”. The images expressed in a surrealist language are marked with black on the white majolica background of the decorative ceramics. The graphic sign is pleasant and delicate, not for nothing Vulcanescu is a graphic of the highest order and the clear image is even more marked in the ceramic execution, contained in a white space that enhances its lines. The chromatic drafting is monochromatic and manages to transfer the observer into a world of poetry, through “insights into signs where the real and the fantastic mix”. His love for music is clearly understandable. As Paloscia says: “Vulcanescu’s attempts reaffirm the wonderful condition of a painting and above all of a sign which incisively knows how to draw from the sources of emotions and represent the fruit of research in fascinating synthesis”.