Imprisoned in his past for confronting the Romanian
Communist authorities, expelled from the pantheon,
or the association of “official” Romanian artists,
with his works banned from official exhibitions halls ,
Petru was thrilled when, in his tremendous desire to work,
he was offered a new, inspiring opening: privately commissioned
churches and cathedrals which, for the next decade, will
absorb most of his creative efforts.
According to a centuries old tradition, churches
in this part of the world, are to be adorned completely,
from top to bottom with frescoes illustrating the Bible.
Though the Communist States were absolutely atheistic
- at least theoretically - the Romanian Communist Rulers
preferred instead to completely banish the religion, or
entirely closing all the sacred prayer locations - the churches,
as the Soviet Union did - to tightly control the Romanian
Orthodox Church, by appointing its leaders, tolerating the
existence of theological faculties and of monasteries, but,
at the same time infiltrating the communities using the
priests as agents of influence among worshipers.
Many of the church representatives though, managed,
in spite of the regime pressure and its manipulations, to
maintain their dignity, and implement their true missions,
leading their communities with unquestionable fervor toward
the genuine purpose of religion. Many of these priests sacrificed
their lives building new churches, most of the time without
legal authorization, animated by the absolute need of the
members of their communities, and in spite of the severe
consequences their actions triggered .This explains though,
why during the dreadful years of communism, more sacred
monuments have been built and painted in Romanian than ever
before, in its entire history.
For Petru, as a contemporary artist, this was a dramatic
shift though, even if exploring art origins, the realization
that art started as a form of religious or spiritual
expression becomes immediately clear.
He was perfectly conscious that, in spite of the
fact that it was religion,
before anything else, that had inspired the greatest monuments
of art of the humanity, a
divorce between the two, had happened long time ago, probably,
mostly after Renaissance, and, consequently, sacred art
was in constant decline in the Western world,
That was the moment when Petru felt as if he was
again not only in a politically incorrect position,
placing himself against the course of history, but also
in some kind of odd terms with the art history itself.
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an artist decision:
to reconcile religion and art in our contemporary times
Possessing a rare vision, and a genuine fervor
for the things of the Creator, in order to align
himself with the sense of his own mission in art and life,
the artist concluded that, under the given circumstances
of his existence, he must have been somehow awarded the
responsibility to reconcile religion and art in our contemporary
times.
Consequently, Petru, accepted the commissions to
paint frescoes in churches with the crucial conviction
that Sacred Art had the capacity to directly impact
the life of the viewers.
His painting became thus, at the end of the 20th
century, not only an immense Christian narrative in fresco,
but, mostly, the embodiment and the manifestation of an
agency able to operate spiritual transformations through
a superior - visual- access to the Universal Cosmic Hierarchy.
He also started to paint with the genuine expectation
that, instead of emulating old and obsolete Byzantine
models, he was rather representing emblematic Christian
experiences , latent for about 2 centuries in the depth
of human consciousness.
Today’s art mirrors too often in its representations
the devastation of humanity in its futile quest for meaning,
the world of art being compromised by an acute commercialization
, consumed with selling and making money... says the artist.
He knew that his own
contemporaneity
would prevail !
His
conclusion was that, no matter what he would paint, even
frescoes meant to illustrate Christianity, he could never
banish his true self in a historical past, he could never
sequestrate inside himself the contemporary artist that
belonged to these very days, even if he studied so diligently
the Old Masters of Europe, or was imposed to paint in
the14th century Byzantine style.
A
quarter century after Petru painted his first church,
considered in our days as the creator of some of the vastest
ensembles of sacred mural frescoes, ever created by any
artist, succeeding to preserve inside himself the genuine
artist he always meant to become, seems these days, like
one of the most important victories of a human spirit
of greatness.
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