The Exotic Model in Romanian Interwar Art, The Queen and her Love for Balchik
The Exotic Model in Romanian Interwar Art, The Queen and her Love for Balchik

Summary/Abstract: The muses of artists began to become more and more diverse, through diversity meaning an increasing acceptance for what is foreign or different. This trend appears in fine arts, but also in literature, especially in the romantic model, which imposes a real fascination for the views, habits and expressive portraits of the inhabitants of the countries of the Far East. The Orient is seen as exotic, colorful and sensual, and the motif of the odalisques confirms the idea of lasciviousness and visual spectacle, offering through the representation of female forms an erotic variant of the Orient. The phenomenon of Balchik, represented by the works of interwar artists, definitively conquered by the undulating landscapes and by the expressiveness and exoticism of the odalisques, represents one of the best moments of modern Romanian painting. The magical universe of the Silver Coast, as well as the typical oriental figures, give the inhabitants and the landscape the possibility to become the favorite subject of the painters. Balchik and the oriental motifs discovered here offered for the interwar Romanian artists, almost exclusively, painting subjects. At the Art Museum of Constanța, as well as at the Dinu and Sevasta Vintilă Museum in Toplau, there are some of the most important works with this theme.

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