Art

The Romanian Dali

Semproniu Iclozan in his studio

Romanian Heritage Center, Niles, IL is preparing a Semproniu Iclozan exhibit this coming winter. Called “the chief of surrealism” of Romania, Chicago-base Romanian painter Semproniu Iclozan has an artistic presence that started more than 40 years ago.

Iclozan’s paintings have found their proper place in art museums around the world like Chicago History Museum, USA, National Museum of Art, Romania, Royal Art Collection, Sweden, Museum of Contemporary Art, Poland etc.

Iclozan’s art work has been exhibited in 25 countries from Europe, Asia and N. America including in France, Italy, Denmark, Romania, Germany, Spain, Sweden, India, Japan, USA, and Canada in more than 50 art events, galleries and solo exhibitions.

In Chicago, Iclozan had exhibits at Portals Gallery, Hansen Gallery, Old Orchard Gallery, Struve Gallery and others. The last group exhibition in Chicago was in 2005 at the Lake Forest Club, presented by Richard Mark Gallery, in Lake Forest, IL, as part of a project called Dimensions in Art.

Dalmatian Nights

His latest sold piece was in December of 2009, called Dalmatian Nights and was sold by the Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, in Chicago. “His work doesn’t come up that often, but when it does it sells well. Iclozan is an interesting artist, with very interesting work,” says Leslie Hindman.

Educated at the prestigious Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of Fine Arts, now Bucharest National University of Arts, Iclozan studied under Corneliu Baba, a famous Romanian painter, and received his Master in Fine Arts in 1966.

“Iclozan has a very solid education behind him, with highly advanced drawing skills. Usually, European artists have a very different education that gives them much more possibilities to create, explore and put their ideas on the canvas,” says expressionist painter Mila Ryk, owner of the on-line magazine Art and Beyond that promotes artists through the new social media.

In visit to Iclozan’s workshop you will find the artist surrounded by a calmness almost to be envied. Time seems to stop in a place where it found peace. The artist’s studio is the place where inspiration comes in with pleasure and, sometimes, forgets to leave. “There is no inspiration without the work at the easel,” says Iclozan.

The Romanian painter’s studio is the place where the music of Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Schubert, and Vivaldi are, for a long time, part of the family. It is the place that you remember with pleasure, because it has the air of a clear sky, at the beginning of the spring. If you wouldn’t see the artist easel, tubes of paint, the brushes and the walls full of paintings you would not know a painter is at work. Everything is sparkling clean and organized to the last detail.

Not to limit them, Iclozan doesn’t like to name his paintings (even thought all the paintings have a name when they are exhibited, for recognition purposes.) The paintings signed Iclozan are a daily journal that includes notes, desires, ideas, people, visions, conceptions, and feelings, which come alive through colors, are anchored in continuous time, and are born in the artist’s subconscious.

Surrealism is a 20th century literary and artistic movements that attempts to express the workings of the subconscious and is characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter.

“I don’t work at only one painting. Sometimes I feel that I reach a dead end with a painting and I let it sit for a while. Then I wait, and I rethink it and I watch it some more, until I can finish it,” says the artist. 

Citizen of the Moon, now in the permanent collection at the Chicago History Museum, is an example of the projection of the artist’s mind. From 1999 to 2002, the Chicago History Museum conducted Global Communities, a documentation project on some of the Chicago area’s recent immigrant and refugee communities.

Peter T. Alter, Ph.D., historian, former curator and currently archivist at the Chicago History Museum remembers the first time he met the Romanian artist. “Valentina O’Connor, herself a Romanian refugee and a project volunteer, suggested we talk with Mr. Iclozan about his life and work. I sat in on this interview which was the first time I had met Mr. Iclozan. 

After that, we began a brief negotiation to purchase Citizen of the Moon for the collection. Mr. Iclozan was very generous with the Chicago History Museum, and we purchased this work in 2001,” says Alter.

The history behind the painting runs concomitant with Iclozan’s life. After leaving Romania in the early 1980s, the Ceausescu government revoked Iclozan’s Romanian citizenship, and at that time he was just applying for the American citizenship. He created the painting during the time in which he and his wife were not citizens of any country, hence the title Citizen of the Moon.

“The American flag in the foreground with the moonscape behind inside what the artist called a ‘UPS box’ seemed to portray his desire for American citizenship, but also the realization that he did not have the protection of any government. He completed it in 1991,” says Alter.

Remembering this, Iclozan starts laughing “Mr. Alter picked the painting himself. They both (Alter and O’Connor) came in my studio and he liked the story behind the Citizen of the Moon. I had no country at the time.”

Iclozan left Romania in 1985, when Ceausescu “got mad” and “his Government wanted the artists to serve him.” There was no freedom of expressions and many artists decided to leave the country and apply for political asylum.

An artist needed to have an official invitation to an exhibit from a gallery outside Romania to get permission to leave the country and even then a Government approval was needed. Iclozan had an invitation from a gallery in Brussels, Belgium, but when it was the time for the exhibition to open there was nothing displayed because the Romanian Government didn’t give the approval for him to leave.

 “People went to the gallery, but nothing was there. The Government persuaded me to send my paintings to Brussels assuring me that the passport will be ready soon, but it didn’t happened like that,” says the Transylvanian painter. To his surprise, when the invitation from an exhibition at the Academy of Art in Rome came, the communist Government gave him and his wife, also an artist, the authorization to leave. They took advantage of this and did not return to Romania. After 2 months in Italy the Iclozans were headed to Chicago, where they have been residing ever since. “If we would have not left then we would have never been able to get out”, says Iclozan.

Iclozan’s most unique technique is the one in which the paintings expands out of its frame and invades the real world. This technique is meant “to jump” the viewer into the metaphysical world of the painting and, without acknowledging it, to make him be a part of the art work, not just as a passive looker, but as an active participator.

Unexpected Memory

“This is my own invention. It is an illusion that the painting is exiting the frame, when in fact the viewer is entering the metaphysical world of the painting,” says Iclozan. Last year, Bunte Auction sold Unexpected Memory, an Iclozan painting that had the “out of the frame” technique. The buyer called the auction house back to ask if the painting is considered from the external frame or the interior frame, having difficulty in finding the right frame. At the end, the artist advised the buyer to put the painting in a glass showcase.

Sometimes a painting reminds you of a place where you have been before or of a place where you wouldn’t ever want to go. But, other times, sitting in front of a painting you contemplate the idea of being there, inside the landscape it presents or the world it represents. Iclozan’s paintings, though surreal, do not create places that frighten you, as it happens with most paintings from this genre. 

Rather, Iclozan creates places where you like to be or dream about, in full harmony, as the artist’s personality. “What we see is temporary, what we can’t see is permanent,” says the Transylvanian artist. “Iclozan is a surrealist who reminds me of Salvador Dali, but Iclozan’s art has a romantic, sensual, soft feel about it. There is not so much struggle. I really like his art, the composition, and the colors he uses,” says Ryk.

The artist presence through his art is much deeper than the eye allows it to see, and the search is much more rewarding than the effort to find it. “A good painting must be felt even with the eyes closed, as a spiritual presence,” says Iclozan.

If art is freedom of expression born of deep desire for personal and spiritual understanding, then art is the spirit’s necessity to be free, for a desire that does not let you breathe, that obsesses and torments you must be released, to set you free. “Painting is a sweet paint,” says the Romanian artist.

Now, at 72 years old, Iclozan biggest desire is to see his paintings in a retrospective exhibition in Romania. “I have this big wish to see all my paintings together, from all periods, gathered from museums and private collectors, in a final exhibition back home in Romania. After all these years I would like to meet with my paintings again. But who knows, maybe others will see them,” says the Transylvanian artist.