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The Romanian painter Ignat Bednarik (1882 –
1963) worked in almost every genre: portrait,
landscape, still life, genre scenes, composition.
He tried different techniques - oil-painting,
Water_color|water-color, pastel, ink-drawing -
before finally devoting himself purely to
water-color. He was also interested in decorative
art, design, Interior_decoration|interior
decoration and book illustration. In his lifetime,
he produced more than 3000 works of art.

Today, his works can be seen in collections and
museums both in Romania and abroad: the Romanian
National Gallery of Art, Military Museum, and
National History Museum, the Bucharest City Museum
of History and Art, the library of the Romanian
Academy, the Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu; also in
the Albertina_%28Vienna%29|Albertina Collection in
Vienna and in private collections in Europe,
America and the Middle East.

From 1898, Bednarik studied at the Bucharest
School of Fine Arts under the sculptor and
water-colourist, Ion Georgescu. In 1901, he went
to Vienna where he occasionally attended classes
at the Academy of Fine Arts. His real teachers,
however, were the masterpieces in the collections
of the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Albertina.

In 1909, he married Elena Alexandrina Barabas,
also a graduate of the Bucharest School of Fine
Arts. Together they left for Munich to study at
the Royal School of Applied Art. Munich at that
time was a dynamic, international, cultural
centre, brimming with new ideas, in particular the
influence of the Jugendstil aesthetic.

The Bednariks made their debut in 1910, in Paris,
at the Salon d'automne held in the Grand Palais.
They returned to Bucharest in the same year. Ignat
Bednarik exhibited for the first time in Romania
in 1913 at the 'Artistic Association'; he
subsequently took part in official salons and
opened his first individual exhibition in
Bucharest in 1915.

His works of the period bring the influence of
European symbolism to Romania at the same time as
Alexandru Macedonski was exploring similar ideas
in poetry. The longing for evasion, a favourite
concern of symbolists, shows itself in a variety
of ways in his work. A symbolic interpretation of
reality, seen through the world of myths, is found
in works like Saved, while the interdependence of
heaven and earth is explored in When the gods came
down to earth and a demythologising of fiction is
attempted in End of the legend (all 1915). The
need for escape, the longing for the absolute and
the desire to recreate reality in an ideal
dimension can also be seen in Towards glory
(1915), The Spirit Triumphs (1916), Excelsior, The
Paths of Life (1922) and Aeternum Vale!. 

The escape into the world of legends and ancient
ballads (for example, Master Manole ) demonstrates
Bednarik's debt to Romanian folk-tales, seen
particularly well in his charming series of
illustrations for The Tales of the Romanians by
Petre Ispirescu (1925-26).

Notes of nostalgia and reverie also permeate his
portrait-compositions Ioana (1920), The Letter
(1921) and Portrait of Mrs. M. Tomescu (1923),
while his treatment of philosophical subjects,
such as Towards the Styx (1916), The Enigma of
Life (1919), Chimera , or To Be or Not To Be
(1922), is imbued with an air of symbolic mystery.

Another kind of symbolic escape is found in the
realm of fine sensations, of correspondances. The
theme of music often appears in Bednarik's work,
for example Young girl playing the violin (1915),
At the piano and Playing the violin (both 1922).
Often music is associated with flowers which
decorate the interior where the music is being
produced; at times they are so faintly sketched on
the canvas as to be almost invisible (another
symbolist trait). Flowers are often present in
portraits of children (Mother's birthday) and
almost always in paintings of female figures (a
favourite association of Art Nouveau artists), for
example in Portrait of the artist's wife (1919),
Portrait of a young girl (1925), or Portrait of
Miss J.P. (1924). They are also seen in his
interiors with nudes painted in 1921. The flower
symbolism is enhanced by the choice of the blossom
which accompanies the female figure. Mastering the
delicate transparency of water-colour, Bednarik
surrounds his sitters sometimes with lilies, but
more often with roses or peonies. In his next
period, from 1919 to 1928, the still life with
flowers became one of his favourite subjects.

The novelty of his work lies in its symbolist
conception as well as the atmosphere of deep
philosophical contemplation, transposed through
water-colour, which imbues his painting with such
distinctive individuality.

The horrors of the First World War brought an
abrupt halt to these heady, coloured, symbolist
atmospheres. As a member of the War Team of
Artists and Sculptors set up in Iasi by Queen
Marie, Bednarik employed all his graphic skill in
vigorous depictions of conflict and hardship .

Between 1915 and 1927, Bednarik held eight
individual water-colour exhibitions in Bucharest
and, in 1928, one in New York; every one of these
was well received by the press.

Bednarik also executed a series of works which
created a fresco of typical scenes from Romanian
daily life. Towards 1947, partially recovering his
sight after a period of almost total blindness, he
painted a number of canvases depicting Characters
from old Bucharest, or scenes from the heroic past
of the Romanian people (The Execution of Gheorghe
Doja - 1954). In 1956 a retrospective of the work
of Ignat Bednarik was organised in Bucharest by
the Union of Artists.

Source : http://www.bednarik.non-profit.nl/ Ignat
Bednarik
(With permission).