Sculpture at heart of Romanian identity waits to hear her fate
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Version 0 of 1. The woman, carved from limestone, sits with her arms resting on her pulled-up legs and looks enigmatically ahead. She is regarded as one of Romania’s finest modernist artworks, yet the Bucharest government’s refusal to say whether it wants to buy her has left the €20m (£15m) sculpture in a murky legal limbo, and its owners unable to sell. The statue, The Wisdom of the Earth by Constantin Brâncuși, has a history that reflects the tumult in its creator’s native land. First sold in 1911, it was confiscated by the communists in 1957 and became the subject of a lengthy legal battle after the fall of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, ending in 2008 with it returned to the family of its original owner. The latest instalment began in September 2014 when the family announced it was putting Brâncuși’s statue, his most celebrated work still in Romania, up for sale. As an artwork considered a national treasure, Romania has a right of first refusal should it wish to keep the Brâncuși out the hands of a foreign gallery or collector. But by failing to officially respond or enter into meaningful negotiations, those involved in the sale say the Romanian state has in effect blocked the legal owners from selling to anyone else. International galleries such as the Tate Modern, which already owns four Brâncuși sculptures and could be one potential destination, are unlikely to push ahead while legal uncertainties exist. “If you want to sell a work of art that is a national treasure, the state has a pre-emption right to buy, but it must give an answer within 30 days of notification,” said Bogdan Grabowski, the lawyer acting for the Romascu family, the sculpture’s owners. “Until now the state hasn’t proposed a certain sum or asserted that it is willing to take its pre-emption rights.” Brâncuși, who spent much of his life living in Paris, is considered Romania’s most important artist, and his sculptures change hands for up to €26m. The Wisdom of the Earth is considered one of his defining works. “The truth is that it is an iconic sculpture for Romanians; it’s an iconic image that is present in all the books about our national identity. The state used it a lot in its cultural propaganda and transformed it into an icon of the Romanian soul,” said Alexandru Baldea, managing partner of Artmark, the Romanian auction house charged with selling the piece. “Legally we’re allowed to sell it. But as a matter of fact we cannot sell it. Basically we are obliged to wait for an official response from the state.” The challenges surrounding first the ownership and now the sale of The Wisdom of the Earth underscore the difficult situation in Romania in relation to the many works of art confiscated by the former communist regime. Roxana Theodorescu, the director of the National Museum of Art of Romania, told MPs in January that since 2000 the National Museum had returned 2,000 works of art to their original owners, and that in the near future it would be returning 253 more, with several hundred others under litigation. “I invite you to visit our museum as quickly as possible because with the frequency we are returning works it is possible that in the near future you won’t have anything to look at,” she told those present, according to Romanian media. Many believe that the Romanian state simply doesn’t have the funds available to buy the sculpture, despite earlier comments made by the then minister of culture, Kelemen Hunor, who last September told Romanian media that if the price was right the authorities needed to find the money in the budget. There have been suggestions that a public campaign within Romania could raise part of the money needed through donations. There is a precedent: one of Bucharest’s main concert halls was partly funded through a public offering in the 1880s. Those involved in the attempted sale of The Wisdom of the Earth have little sympathy for the Romanian state. “It is a similar situation with the works of art confiscated by the Nazis,” claimed Grabowski, the family lawyer, who said the legal process behind reclaiming works of art confiscated during the communist period had been unnecessarily complex. The Wisdom of the Earth was originally purchased in 1911 by Gheorghe Romascu, a Romanian engineer and art lover. His daughters began the process of trying to reclaim the sculpture shortly after the 1989 revolution but encountered a drawn-out legal process that only ended in 2008. One of the two daughters died in 2006. The surviving daughter is 92. “She is expecting at any time that the state will cause more problems. She would prefer it to be sold overseas,” Grabowski said. The Romanian ministry of culture did not respond to repeated interview requests for this article. |