Geoffrey Tyler's thoughts on Georgeta Naparus

Geoffrey Tyler's thoughts on Georgeta Naparus

Tyler, Geoffrey

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I met Georgeta Naparus and her husband, Octav Grigorescu, through the Gorduz, with whom they were friends and who shared a studio not far from that of the Gorduz. Like many people in that part of the world they were heavy smokers and sadly both died in their early seventies.

Naparus throughout her career incorporated Romanian peasant costumes, sometimes as subjects but most of the time as decorative detailing in more general subjects. Often these detailed costumes were on somewhat fantastic persons. She was relatively prolific but it was never easy to buy her paintings because they were so popular with both Romanians and the diplomatic community and were sold from her studio almost as soon as they were finished. One rarely found them in galleries on consignment. However, over the years I was able to obtain about seven of her canvases, varying in size from small to quite large. Unlike some artists, for example Gheorghiu, she rarely took much trouble over the framing of her works, presumably because they stayed such a short time with her. This was no problem for me, since with paintings of any size I could not carry them back in my luggage other than unframed and rolled up.

On my last two trips to Romania for the Fund in 1987, I had basically decided to retire shortly and hence realised they were my last opportunity to add to my collection. As it happened, the Romanian economy was in relatively dire straits and domestic sales of art were suffering. As a result, many artists who normally sold little on consignment through galleries were doing so in 1987. In galleries I bought works by Caltia, Gheorghiu, and Bernea, who in the past had rarely been in galleries. In particular, I bought from galleries one medium-sized and one small framed Naparus, and from her directly a large canvas of a gate in a medieval city fortress wall.