Romania – The Identity Representation of Traditional Costume in Art
The National Museum of Art of Romania announces the extension by one month of the exhibition “Romania. The Identity Representation of Traditional Costume in Art”, namely for the period 12 February – 15 March 2026, with the regular visiting schedule: Wednesday–Friday 10:00–18:00 and Saturday–Sunday 11:00–19:00.

The National Museum of Art of Romania presents the exhibition-event:

“Romania – the identity representation of traditional costume in art”

Event held under the High Patronage of the President of Romania

Curator: Erwin Kessler

Curatorial team: Judit Balint, Mălina Conțu, Alina Petrescu, Emanuela Cernea, Costina Anghel

An exhibition organized in partnership with the Amzei Foundation.

Romania presents a vivid fresco of the artistic journeys of the ia, the Romania traditional blouse, across various techniques, from painting and sculpture to graphic art, photography, object, installation, film, music, posters, fashion, stamps, playing cards, vases, banknotes, books, albums, cartoons, and school textbooks.

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Beginning as early as the 16th century, continuing through the 19th and 20th centuries, through socialist realism and into immediate contemporaneity, the Romanian ia has been a major artistic subject. Through its scope, diversity, and innovative interdisciplinary critical research, Romania constitutes an unprecedented platform through which the general public can access representations of the ie and traditional costume in artistic creations.

“Romania – the identity representation of traditional costume in art” is an exhibition, not a stance in favor of ideologies associated with the ia. The selection reveals how, over the centuries, a formal, symbolic, decorative, and at the same time ideological language has been articulated, in which the ia and the folk costume have played a pivotal role in aggregation, political promotion, and sometimes in the visual imposition of Romanian identity.

Over 320 pieces, drawn from the NMAR collections and from various national and international museums, from private collections and contemporary artists, offer the public the richest material for reflection and visual enjoyment on this subject ever presented in a museum. The exhibition broad historical and geographical scope contextualizes representations of Romanian traditional costume not only by comparison with artistic depictions of the traditional dress of other minorities in Romania (Hungarian, German), but also in relation to artistic representations of folk costumes from neighboring regions—Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria—in order to highlight similarities and differences, influences and constants.

These creations will be complemented by works by Henri Matisse, including the famous painting La Blouse Roumaine, an iconic masterpiece of universal modernity, part of the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris—a work that left France for the first time as an exceptional loan for the exhibition “Romania – the identity representation of traditional costume in art” at NMAR.

This renowned work will function within the exhibition as an inverted mirror reflecting the consistent effort of Romanian national promotion and propaganda through the ia, which Matisse transposed into a purely aesthetic plane, with major impact on the development of postwar art, decisively contributing to the emergence of Pop Art strategies.

The Romanian ia, in its Matissean version, lies at the origin of the commercial success of the ia in French and international fashion industry. Specifically, these ways of using ia—sometimes excessive, as forms of cultural appropriation—are presented in the exhibition in order to reveal the two interconnected major dimensions of the ia in contemporary imagination: the identity-ideology one and the decorative-commercial one.

The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue highlight the use of traditional costume, especially the ia, in the formation, transmission, and imposition of genuine discourses of national identity, from the earliest times to the present day.

Representations of the ia in Romanian art in the 16th century are followed by the first decisively ideological and propagandistic representations in the 19th century, such as the portrait of Maria Bibescu by painters Constantin Lecca and Carol Popp de Szathmari and the portrait of Maria Rosetti—as a symbol of the Romanian Homeland—by Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, followed by Nicolae Grigorescu and his epigones; by the photographic and pictorial campaign of national legitimation of the royal family through the ia and traditional costume (from Queen Elisabeta I to Queen Marie); by the reconceptualization of the ia in representations of national-specific art during the interwar period, as well as in the Romanian avant-garde. The return to the ia as a visual factor of social and national identity in socialist-realist art and in the official art of the communist regime is contrasted with the rediscovery of the ia in the spiritualist, Romanian nationalist and anti-communist discourse of neo-Orthodox groups during the 1980s, as well as with the subversive incursions of contemporary critical art.

The rendering of the phenomenon of the political appropriation of the ia as an instrument of national and international propaganda after 1990 is presented through various works of contemporary art and through the documentation of certain achievements, but especially of political and visual communication excesses related to the ia as an established identity marker.

As a background to this historical tendency to impose the ia as a standard vehicle of identity, the exhibition consistently presents, throughout its course, the contrast with actual everyday clothing, with prevailing fashion in various periods—from the “German-style” clothing of the bourgeoisie to the French-influenced attire of the aristocracy; from the military uniforms of the first half of the 20th century to the monotonous fashion of the communist period or the explosive and diverse fashion of the post-1989 era. Against the historical backdrop of these everyday fashions, the trans-historical, ideological model of the ia and its identity-national use stands out, with its advantages and its drawbacks and its inherent risks, which the NMAR exhibition renders visible and accessible to our society in order to encourage attention, reflection and creation.

Related events: Throughout the exhibition period, symposia, debates and presentations, concerts, film screenings related to the theme of the ia and traditional costume will be organized.

The exhibition includes a lounge space where visitors have the opportunity to embroider, draw, take photographs or participate in weekend workshops for children and families in a relaxed and creative atmosphere.

The selected pieces come from the NMAR collection, from Romanian artists and collectors, and from 30 partner museums and institutions:

Musée national d’art moderne – Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Galagan Art Museum (Chernihiv, Ukraine—a difficult but exemplary collaboration under the current war conditions); National Gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria; National Museum of Art of Moldova, Chișinău; Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu; Cluj-Napoca Art Museum; Peleș National Museum; “Baia Mare Artistic Centre” County Art Museum; National Museum of the Romanian Peasant; National Library of Romania; Arad Museum Complex; “Iulian Antonescu” Museum Complex – Bacău Art Museum; National Museum Complex “Moldova” Iași – Art Museum; Mureș County Museum; Galați Visual Arts Museum; Museum of the Criș County, Oradea; ASTRA National Museum Complex – Sibiu; Brașov Art Museum; “Holy Three Hierarchs” Monastery in Iași; National Museum of Romanian History; “Ion Ionescu-Quintus” Prahova County Art Museum; Piatra-Neamț Art Museum; Civic Academy Foundation – Memorial Museum of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance in Sighetu Marmației; Bucharest Municipality Museum; “George Oprescu” Institute of Art History; Library of the Romanian Academy, Stamps Room; National Museum of Contemporary Art of Romania / NMAC; National Archives of Romania; Romfilatelia.

Supported by: ”Friends of NMAR” Association, Catena Foundation for Art, DSBA, Men at Work, iGuzzini, La Blouse Roumaine Community, Geberit, Animawings, Austing, Camelia Șucu.

Cultural mobility partner: Suzuki Romania.

Access:

49–53 Calea Victoriei, Entrance A4, Ground floor of the National Gallery

Entrance fee: 60 lei; free admission on the first Wednesday of every month.