Ion Theodorescu-Sion (; also known as Ioan Theodorescu-Sion or Teodorescu-Sion; January 2, 1882 – March 31, 1939) was a Romanian painter and draftsman, known for his contributions to modern art and especially for his traditionalist, primitivist, handicraft-inspired and Christian painting. Trained in academic art, initially an Impressionist, he dabbled in various modern styles in the years before World War I. Theodorescu-Sion's palette was interchangeably post-Impressionist, Divisionist, Realist, Symbolist, Synthetist, Fauve or Cubist, but his creation had one major ideological focus: depicting peasant life in its natural setting. In time, Sion contributed to the generational goal of creating a specifically Romanian modern art, located at the intersection of folk tradition, primitivist tendencies borrowed from the West, and 20th-century agrarian politics.
Initially scandalized by Theodorescu-Sion's experiments, public opinion accepted his tamer style of the mid to late 1910s. Sion was commissioned as a war artist, after which his standing increased. His paintings alternated the monumental depictions of harsh environments, and their inhabitants, with luminous Balcic seascapes and nostalgic records of suburban life. Their search for visual concreteness was a standard for the Anti-Impressionist emancipation of the Romanian artistic scene in the interwar period.
By the mid-1920s, Sion's style became a visual component of the Neo-Traditionalist, "Romanianist" and neo-Byzantine current formed around Gândirea literary magazine. In the years before his death, the emergent avant-garde was voicing criticism of his new stylistic and ideological choices. Sion's oscillation between modernity and parochialism, his flirtation with authoritarian politics, and the eventual decline of his work endure as topics of controversy.
Biography
Background and early life The son of a Romanian Railways brakeman and the peasant-woman Ioana Ursu,Gogîltan, p.138, 149 Theodorescu-Sion was born in Ianca, Brăila County, Simona Mocanu, Medalion Ion Theodorescu - Sion. 70 ani de la trecerea în neființă , at the Brăila County's Directorate for Culture and National Patrimony Sites ; retrieved November 19, 2011 and baptized into the Romanian Orthodox Church. "Pictori și zugravi bisericești autorizați", in Vestitorul, Nr. 17-18/1937, p.164 On both sides, his family had origins in Transylvania's Apuseni Mountains and the Breadfield, regions at the time still part of Austria-Hungary; by popular account, some were Moți, that is to say ethnic Romanian herders with a distinctly rustic lifestyle.Gogîltan, p.122-123, 138-139, 149. See also Crainic, p.287; Tăslăuanu, p.248 Ion spent his early childhood on the Bărăgan Plain, but grew up into a passionate hiker of the Carpathian Mountains.Gogîltan, p.138; Pavel, p.211
In 1894, having attended primary and secondary school in the Danube port of Brăila, the boy left for Bucharest to study at the National School of Fine Arts, and graduated in 1897. From 1904 to 1907, with a Ministry of War scholarship to his name, "Compoziții ale pictorului Ion Theodorescu-Sion, în colecțiile Muzeului de Artă", in Telegraf - Constanța, March 10, 2007 he traveled to France. Sion consequently enlisted at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, studying under academic masters Jean-Paul Laurens and Luc-Olivier Merson. He was a rebellious student, shaped by socialist ideas, and squandered his scholarship money.Vlasiu (2010), p.9
Sion was rendered enthusiastic by news of the Revolution in Russia, and was thrown out by his conservative patrons. He burned all his belongings except for a copy of Les Fleurs du mal, and traveled to French Algeria, where he probably intended to apply for the Foreign Legion. He later returned to Romania, but frequently traveled out of Romania on study trips. These took him to the Low Countries, England and Italy. He was a staff cartoonist (caricaturist) for various Romanian satirical papers, including ("The Trouble"), ("Uncle Ghiță") and George Ranetti's Furnica.
From his French period, Theodorescu-Sion brought home the echoes of Impressionism, and the more modern influences of Paul Cézanne, the post-Impressionist, and André Derain, the Fauve, together with the optical theories of Divisionism. Krikor Zambaccian, "Zambacu", Editura LiterNet; retrieved November 19, 2011 Between 1908 and 1915, the artist, still heavily indebted to the work of Henri Fantin-Latour, Mariana Vida, "La société Tinerimea artistică de Bucarest et le symbolisme tardif entre 1902-1910", in Revue Roumaine d'Histoire de l'Art. Série Beaux-arts, Vol. XLIV, 2007, p.63-64 was focused on creating Symbolist compositions with trees.Pavel, p.92-93 As he took more risks in his experimentation, he began looking to Cubist Georges Braque for a new way of arranging still lifes. In tandem with such contributions were Realistic works suggesting the influence of Romania's Camil Ressu.Broșteanu (1931), p.316
Symbolist movement and Balcic colony Sion was received into the innovative and eclectic society , as one of its Symbolist recruits, in 1909, and shortly after exhibited his religious-themed portrait (). The same year, he sent his works to the Official Bucharest Salon, and shared with others the jury's Second Prize ex aequo. Veronica Marinescu, "Licitație Brâncuși, la Paris" , in Curierul Național, December 1, 2010 In tandem, he began hiking through the Carpathian and rural regions of Transylvania. His paintings record a growing interest in lives of its peasant inhabitants (and thus in his own peasant roots), with focus on the Romanian-inhabited areas of Apuseni, Breadfield or Mărginimea Sibiului.Gogîltan, p.122-123, 138. See also Tăslăuanu, passim Culturally, Theodorescu-Sion also affiliated with a new wave of Romanian artists, who used simple forms, bold colors and clear contours to illustrate mystically charged subjects. Alongside Sion, this group has been said to include Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck, Friedrich StorckCernat, p.45-47 and Iosif Iser, followed later by Rodica Maniu and Francisc Șirato.Călinescu, p.823 Literary historian George Călinescu describes this moment as having generated "calligraphic painting": "shaped by the contours and by the invention of ceremonial attitudes", and "most often stripped down to the drawing."
The primitivists' activity in the visual realm is linked to the emergence of unconventional writers and the more radical manifestations of Romanian Symbolist culture—commentators note their kinship with poet Adrian Maniu (Rodica Maniu's brother)Călinescu, p.822-823 or with the minor Symbolists Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești, N. D. Cocea and Theodor Cornel.Cernat, p.39, 45-46 Theodorescu-Sion's first moment in the spotlight was in 1910, at the collective art show, which shocked the public and the academic authors.Cernat, p.45-46; Gogîltan, p.122, 142 The group, joined by sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, found itself marginalized inside the exhibit, but received support in the Symbolist press.Cernat, p.46-47 Building on the conclusions of other researchers, such as Theodor Enescu, literary historian Paul Cernat sees in this movement, called "anti-academic post-impressionism", Romania's first departure from picturesque salon art, as well as a Romanian version of the Armory Show phenomenon.Cernat, p.45
Sion was still regularly present at later Tinerimea salons. In 1912, he was extremely radical, allowing critics of the day to regard him as the prototype Romanian "Futurist" (an expression of shocking newness, rather than an actual affiliation with the Futurist current).Vlasiu (2010), p.7-9 In 1913, his featured paintings included a rendition of the Crucifixion and melancholic depictions of solitary shepherds.Duma, passim A year later, he had a personal exhibit (his first-ever) at the Romanian Atheneum. As noted by journalist Octavian Tăslăuanu, the establishment still viewed his works with embarrassment, and "exiled" them into a lateral hall.Tăslăuanu, p.248
Shortly after the Second Balkan War of 1913, a Romanian administration took over in Southern Dobruja, and the region became of interest to Romanian artists. Balcic (Balchik), once a promising port of export, declined economically, but its vistas and its exotic Muslim inhabitants made it a popular summertime resort and artists' colony. Ioana Vlasiu, "Tonitza și întâmplările artei românești" , in România Literară, Nr. 18/2002 Theodorescu-Sion joined this phenomenon at its earliest stage, and was, with Ressu, Iser, Cuțescu-Storck and others, a "founding member" of the Balcic painters' community. He was also involved on the art scene of Northern Dobruja, commissioned to decorate the Constanța City Hall palace with a series of murals. It was here that he first met art collector and mecena Krikor Zambaccian, who would purchase an exhibit a sizable portion of his later canvasses, including Moara din Balcic ("The Balchik Mill").Broșteanu (1931), p.313, 316 Zambaccian remembered Sion as a talented but peculiar and vindictive artist, who posed as artistic mentor but could not stand actual competition.
War artist and Arta Română shows Around 1914, Sion had distanced entirely himself from Symbolism and the decorative lines of Art Nouveau, advising his young pupil Lola Schmierer Roth to do the same—they both relied on a proto-Cubist composition into solid shapes, for which the model was Cézanne. Mariana Vida, "Între tensiunile expresionismului și noul umanism", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 300-301, December 2005 Co-opted as a teacher at the National School of Fine Arts, Theodorescu-Sion was also one of the founding members of the Artists' Society, a leading Romanian professional association.
As Romania entered World War I in 1916, Ion Theodorescu-Sion was forced to interrupt his work on the Constanța murals. Once drafted into the Romanian Land Forces, he returned to official and academic art: he was employed by Chief of Staff Dumitru Iliescu to depict the Romanian Armed Forces in action. Sion witnessed (and painted) the subsequent storming of the Romanian front by the Central Powers, and joined the exodus of Romanian soldiers and civil authorities into the eastern region of Moldavia. He was in Iași, the provisional capital, where he began collaborating with other war artists driven away by the defeats. In 1918, Sion joined them as they broke with Tinerimea, creating the new artistic forum Arta Română ("Romanian Art")—Ressu, Nicolae Tonitza, Ștefan Dimitrescu and Oscar Han were among the other main affiliates.Gogîltan, p.143
After the Romanian authorities returned to Bucharest, Sion's work was featured in the Franklin Hall salon organized by Minerva Publishers (1919).Cisek, "Ioan Theodorescu-Sion", p.251; "Marius Bunescu", p.282 He still flirted with socialism, and, as noted by journalist Tudor Teodorescu-Braniște, helped out in the 1920 funeral ceremony of Marxist theorist Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea: "The great old man [...] was being laid down on a bier that a group of socialist painters, headed by Teodorescu Sion, had previously wrapped in red fabric." Boris Marian, , in Realitatea Evreiască, Nr. 231-232 (1031-1032), May–June 2005, p.14 His wartime conduct and artistic merits resulted in formal recognition, and he was granted high honors—the Order of the Crown (as Officer) and Bene Merenti Medal, both in 1923. The same year, he participated in the Arta Română exhibit with Argeș County landscapes, including Fântâna lui Manole ("Manole's Fountain"). Eugen Crăciun, "Cronica artistică. Expoziția societății Arta Română", in Gândirea, Nr. 16-17/1923, p.257-258 (digitized by the Babeș-Bolyai University Transsylvanica Online Library)