Waterfall I 2002

Romul Nutiu created "Waterfall I" with oil on canvas. Abstract landscapes like this one, even when they don't directly depict political subjects, are interesting for the ways they negotiate the complicated cultural politics of the Soviet Bloc. Nutiu was Romanian, and spent his artistic career navigating the demands for socialist realism with his own artistic vision. Here, think of the bright colors, like the reds and blues, as a coded rejection of the drabness of communist aesthetics. The rushing waterfall seems to symbolize the possibility of freedom and change. Nutiu trained at the Institute of Fine Arts in Bucharest; institutions like this one had to balance the demands of the state against international trends in art. Was abstraction a rejection of the regime, or did it serve the regime's purposes by suggesting it was modern and progressive? As historians, we need to examine exhibition records, artists' manifestos, and government documents from the period to better understand the place of this painting in its historical context.