ROMANIA REDUX

Entering Cluj one sunny evening

Suceave, from just across from Aldi

 A VERY ROMANIAN ROMANCE

 

Over recent times I have be casting around files of photos as inspiration for paintings. In 2018 we had nine days travelling through Romania.

One of the high spots each day, when entering the town or city in which we’d spend the night, was seeing the apartment blocks towering above us. I hurried took photos and squealed with delight.

 

My passionate appreciation of architecture built during the regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu (1965–1989) probably puts me in a majority of one.  However I love the symmetry, curves and haphazard nature of these schemes heighted by when the sun hits them.

 

Ceauşescu had been to North Korea and China in 1971 and was impressed with the huge housing blocks that were constructed on ground levelled to make way for dormitory neighbourhoods. 

 

Rinse and repeat in Romania. Traditional urban areas were destroyed in a process christened Ceauşima (Ceauşescu’s system). 

 

The dictator’s bombast and swagger reached its zenith in the building of the 'Palace of the People' now post-revolution renamed the Palace of the Parliament which we visited, huge beyond belief.

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