The National Museum of Art of Romania (MNAR) announces the opening of the exhibition "A Forgotten History: The Union of Fine Arts in Romania," which will take place on Sunday, November 27,  2022, at 4:00 PM in the Alveoli Hall - Ştirbei Wing. It will be open to  the public from December 1, 2022, to April 30, 2023.

Opening remarks by Dumitru Costin, President of the National Trade Union Bloc.

"We continue with this opening by inviting personalities from fields other than the arts to inaugurate our exhibitions, in support of the  idea that artworks address a wider audience, not just specialists," emphasizes Călin Stegerean, the general director of MNAR.

The exhibition comprises 150 works of painting, sculpture, graphic art, and documents from the National Museum of Art of Romania, illustrating the activities of the first artistic organizations in Romania: the General Society of Artists in Romania (1908-1909), the Union of Fine Arts (1922-1940), and the New Union of Fine Arts (1944-1950).

These organizations played a significant role in asserting, reassessing, and protecting the status of artists during that period. 

Like other professional organizations, the creative unions - through their statutes and regulations, as well as those of the Fine Arts  Academies - granted their members full freedom of expression and  defended the interests of all artists, providing them with equal  opportunities for recognition. Unjustly forgotten by posterity, these organizations made a fundamental contribution to the maturation of the Romanian artistic environment.

Grouped into three sections, the exhibited works correspond to the three professional organizations that operated during the interwar  period: the General Society of Artists, the Union of Fine Arts, and The New Union of Fine Arts.

The exhibition presents the most important artistic personalities involved in various stages of these three creative unions: Adam Bălțatu (1899-1979), Octav Băncilă (1872-1944), Marius Bunescu  (1881-1971), Traian Cornescu (1885-1965), Nicolae Dărăscu  (1883-1959), Ștefan Dimitrescu (1886-1933), Lucian Grigorescu (1880-1962), Alexandru Satmary (1870-1933), Rudolf Schweitzer- Cumpăna (1886-1975), Dimitrie Serafim (1862-1931), Menelas  (Michel) Simonidi (1870-1933), Jean Alexandru Steriadi(1880-1956), Francisc Șirato (1877-1953), Ion Theodorescu-Sion  (1882-1939), Arthur Verona (1868-1946), Alexandru Severin  (1881-1956). The selection covers aspects of Romanian art over a period of nearly a century, from the mid-19th century to the mid-20^th century.

Curator: Alina Petrescu, art historian, museum curator at the Modern Romanian Art section since 2004, collaborated as a visual  arts editor and art critic for the supplement of Revista 22  "Bucureștiul Cultural," Revista Arta, Revista Muzeelor, as well as  Magazinul Istoric. Currently, she holds the position of head of the  Modern Romanian Art section at the Romanian National Museum of Art.