Una

excerpts IV In his office on the ground floor, Saferian, on a chair and surrounded by four men, all standing, was contemplating an oil portrait, set near them against the back of an ordinary straw chair. It is an Ingres, most certainly, said one of the four, a man with trimmed

If his consuming passion for art gained Krikor Zambaccian a familiar fame amongst the collectors in Bucharest, particularly by dint of his acquisitions in the field or foreign art, few know that his younger brother, Onic (1891-1975), yet another aficionado of beauty, was

Just think that I paid it once, and it pays me off a lifetime instead. * Zambaccian on a canvas by Pallady Having great collectors represents as big a chance for a culture as having great artists. Flourishing arts are hardly imaginable when wealthy art-lovers are missing,

The inauguration of the art collection Beatrice and Hrandt Avakian, held on a torrid day in August 1974, brought together an extremely numerous public. The exceptional interest manifested was owed to the fact that two siblings living in modest conditions, from hand to mouth,

Once, the art lover, strolling along the streets of Bucharest, would stop in front of certain houses – either known to him or not – that confined within their walls innumerable works of art. Around these art works there endured a name, that of the people who had gathered

Virgil Cioflec, later to become a writer and a collector, stands out amongst the moral and financial supporters of the initiators and founders of Artistic Youth Society (December 1901). With some of its founders, Gheorghe Petraşcu, Ştefan Popescu, Kimon Loghi, Ipolit Strâmbulescu

Simu Museum A conservative MP in the 1888, 1891 and 1899 parliament sessions, Anastasie Simu finally became tired of the Machiavellian political life in Romania at the end of the 19th century; realising he had no prospects to achieve momentous social and cultural events

political scientist Let us start from the end: thank God Romanians are Orthodox, have not totally renounced the traditional values of the village (where 45% of them are still living, a record in Europe!), do not seem to show an ethnically-grounded morbid penchant for suicide,

excerptTHE CREATION WORK (1715) When he spoke to Aaron Juda Hartman, the rabbi from Spain, the one who had diplomas from Paris and Tripoli, driven to Peloponnesus to look after his poor relatives but also to take care, unimpeded by anyone, in a dusty room heated by the

Safta was a victim of her past of love affairs and amorous generosity, but also of the human decay from the madhouse times and from all times. The former chanteuse had decided, the night when she ordered the enamoured shopkeeper to break the fiddles of the fiddlers, to give

The English-speaking people do not have a perfect equivalent for the French joie de vivre. The latter conveys the accord between body and soul, the excitement at the prospects of the future (advienne que pourra), the feeling of well-being (se sentir bien dans sa peau).

 I have never associated bohemia with physical misery. In my opinion poverty and lack of comfort don't necessarily have physiological consequences. Bohemia is an act one takes responsibility for as long as it doesn't diminish the dignity of the individual. For