CIRCUS

Circus I ,oil on canvas ,100/95 cm

Circus II ,oil on canvas ,120/100

Circus performers ,pastel on paper ,55/41 cm.

Detail from Circus II

Horses ,monotype on paper ,30/20 cm.

Circus III ,acryl on paper , 50/48 cm.

Circus performers , watercolor on paper ,35/26 cm.

Circus V ,mixed technique on paper ,38/33 cm.

Circus performers , watercolor on paper , 35/26 cm.

Circus performers , watercolor on paper , 37/27 cm.

Circus IV ,mixed technique on paper , 40/36 cm.

DACIAN VESTIGES

Originating from archeological influences which he is reorganizing using modern vision, Dumitru Ivan tries to evoke not only the feeling of a long-gone period but also a selection of suggestive values, permanet stylistic traits of the art that was born on this land.
OCTAVIAN BARBOSA, art critic – “Dictionary of Romanian Conteporary Artists”, 1976

Sketch ,bronze age pottery ,ink on paper ,33/21 cm.

Decoration on pottery, Bronz Age, charcoal drawing, 22/15 cm

Composition ,oil on canvas , 80/54 cm.

Composition ,oil on canvas ,80/72 cm.

Composition ,oil on canvas ,71/70 cm.

Column , oil on canvas , 92/57 cm.

Goddess Bendis ‘ masque ,oil on canvas ,92/62 cm.

Dumitru Ivan exhibits not only talent but also a seriousness with which he is attempting to investigate such inspirational zones that are able to affect his chromatic sensitivity and the capacity to intellectualizing the image. And this does not constitute by far a mere transposition of motive.
NEGOITA LAPTOIU, art critic – excerpt from “Faclia” article, Cluj 1968

“Ivan compares the colors of his native Romanian heritage with the organically created colors of Native Americans in this country .For thousands of years Romanian folk artists have used herbs and plants to bring the bright colors of nature directly into fabrics and paint their wood and ceramic artifacts. “I have been inspired by those colors .” And Ivan’s richly tactile apples or the uncompromised greens, blues and yellows of his still life oils can awaken impressions from childhood when colors were really seen.
Ivan knows that his new environment will bring new influences to his painting . He speaks with excitement of the” glorious and magnificent light “here , and of the red and yellow earthen colors he saw popping out of the snow only this morning.
Nevertheless, Ivan preserved his artistic sensibilities by going back in time. Between 1966 and 1975 he retreated to the archaeological ruins of old Dacia,the Romanian colony of the Roman Empire .His vision there was not to recreate the dead past, but to rediscover the classical values in the art of Dacia, to regenerate the life and vitality of that age and connect it to the present . “
CHARLES NAUMAN, Staff Writer, excerpt from article appearing in “The Rapid City Journal “, Rapid City ,S.D. , USA
February 1st, 1985

STILL LIFE AND FLOWERS

Dumitru Ivan is a Master, trained in the rigors of Old World Romanian tradition. His works celebrate the vitality of life. In their aura the colors of the garden recreate essential emotions and delights for the viewer. Each work is an enchanted gem which is as much magic as reality. He has been student, artist, teacher – exhibiting in various European countries before his escape from the yoke of communism. In South Dakota he has found a new life, new values, new colors, and new challenges, but each work remains as traditional and versatile as the magic carpets of the Orient.
Dr. JAMES GILLIHAN, Art Appraiser – commentary appearing in the 1985 Rapid City exhibition catalog.

Dumitru Ivan’s present paintings assert themselves through proud humility as being part of the Romanian tradition,from its precious privilege,that is,the gift of color and its irreversible poetic alchemy .His painting style is much closer to the generous condition of the act of human confession than to the sensitive dialogue with a cordial mother-nature .
One can point out a certain expressiveness about the application of color,more precisely vibrant brushes that follow a lively pattern are seen right after restless rhythms are quieting down .Nevertheless in his struggle with the raw substance of art,the painter finds himself beyond the intentional impetuosity and becomes involved in the secret refinement of the pictural matter,through his passion of extracting from color and its richness something like an essence of the fragrant hue of the emotional world .
LIVIA DRAGOI , art critic ,excerpt from “ Steaua” article ,1976

Still life with bananas and lemons ,oil on canvas ,66/52 cm.

Still life with grapes ,oil on canvas ,80/64 cm.

Wild flowers , oil on canvas , 90/70 cm.

Still life with gourds ,oil on canvas , 70/50 cm.

Fresias, acryl on canvas , 70/65 cm.

Still life with teapot and lemons , oil on canvas , 50/40 cm.

Still life with wine jug , oil on canvas , 65/54 cm.

Hyacinth ,oil on canvas , 46/40 cm.

Sunflower ,oil on canvas ,80/65 cm.

Japanese apple blossoms ,oil on canvas , 70/55 cm.

Still life with pineapple , oil on canvas , 65/50 cm.

Still life , oil on canvas , 80/56 cm.

Still life with apples ,oil on canvas ,80/64 cm.

Still life with fruits , oil on canvas , 80/60 cm.

Flowers , oil on canvas , 57/44 cm.

Old Romanian pottery , oil on canvas , 70/50 cm.

Yellow lilies , oil on canvas , 70/50 cm.

Still life with guitar , oil on canvas , 80/65 cm.

LANDSCAPE

CELEBRATION AND BRIGHTNESS

Dumitru Ivan is one of the artists whose voluntary separation from Romania, that happened three decades ago, did not hinder in any way his artistic evolution nor it emptied his consciousness that his paintings can endure emotional and social traumas .In a paradise/inferno of the visuals as New York is,where performances and ovations can last a moment or turn to “eternity”,where ”what one looks for “or “what sells” often gives birth to love of cosmical intensity,there are artists like Dumitru Ivan,who have made out of their pictural work an effervescent poetical logo,confirmed and affirmed by the offerings of a recreative stylistics.
For a long time,the consistency of Dumitru Ivan’s painting as well as its force of involvement turned out in its profound lyrical temperament as clearly leading to the figurative Romanian origins.During the last years it added a musical transfiguration with repetitive chromatic hues,structured according to the abstract expressionist logics .
The development of the figurative journey,the personalization,the thorough study and its celebration are founded in the reality from which the artist “indulges”voluptuously in distilling the sources of amazing transparencies .We see tender and beautiful flowers,landscapes surprising different moments of the day or seasons,still lives where sometimes one can feel the imprint of the European painting from the XVI-XVII century ,portraits and compositions .What differentiates Dumitru Ivan’s painting compared to that of many of his colleagues is the language exercised through chromatic intensities ,freed from impurity . The reds and blues from the figurative sequences reveal themselves with a clarity unperturbed by “accidents”,and most of the tones build sequences of an insatiable artistic value.
The artist is refined, issuing voices to which he conveys live and vibrant brightness .The familiar reality is handed to us free of tension but of refined eloquence .
The force of the lines from sketches and inks shows a dynamic temperament and a very good observer .
Feminity, that artists captured along the times in its overwhelming sensuality is also for Dumitru Ivan a territory which he explores feverisly and at the same time loosely, achieving “fabrics” of volumes and colors completing like in a dream, slow floatings and complicated harmonies.It is a painting generously supported by a technique of volumes ,a mysterious one trying to identify through rigorous repetitions and geometrical convolutions ,the feminine body .Storms of flames are springing under the all too vigilant eye.The neverending feeling of the dream is very strong .The changes of language are occurring not because of a lesser perception but from an endeavour leading to liberty ,pointing the artist towards a pictural soliloqui ,opening the possibilities of unifying his own self with the imaginary .An amazing concentration of narrative vectors lead to the birth of a new reality .This is a very important stage in Dumitru Ivan’s art .One can see in it autonomy, and an organic need to animate elements orbiting around reality ,unifying and glorifying the harmony .Brightness is increasing and decreasing,constructions define their unlimited evolution ,surprising and overwhelming us .The essential means beauty and vocation,and energies make elements couple among themselves insatiably .
The artist’s turning from figurative to abstract expressionism is not brutal and it does not contain irreversible tears .It is intended as a resolution,a disappearance of the shades ,a gesture of an inner evolution,a dramatic atonement ,a penmanship that “bites”from the sign of carnality .It is that stage where it resembles a planet full of bright craters ,a stage of sensual passion .There is not a chromatic dominance in sight because the artist uses strong tonal intensities,subtle-diffusing nuances with calming effects or velvety iredescences : red,yellow,green,blue,ochre,sepia(on paper), materialized in oils and pastels .A long- distance runner ,with a pure language,who takes along across the ocean essences from the Romanian pictural tradition,at the age of 75,that he just reached this February,Dumitru Ivan is definitely a name we can always refer to and keep in our sight.
IOLANDA MALAMEN article in” Luceafarul “ ,April 2013

Kogalniceanu Street ,Cluj , Ro. , oil on canvas , 70/65 cm.

Santa Maria de Salute , Venice , oil on canvas , 48/38 cm.

Sighisoara , Ro., mixed technique on paper , 48/40 cm.

Farm in Rapid City ,S.D , USA , oil on canvas , 70.55 cm.

Landscape from Transylvania IV , mixed technique on paper , 40/26cm.

Saint John the Divine , N.Y.,U.S.A. , mixed technique on paper , 60/39 cm.

The National Theatre , Cluj , ink on paper , 30/24 cm.

Winter , oil on canvas , 70/53 cm.

Landscape from Transylvania , mixed technique on paper , 42/25 cm.

Canyon , S.D., USA , oil on canvas , 70/55 cm.

Landscape from Transylvania V , mixed technique on paper , 40/26cm.

The Greek-Orthodox Cathedral , Cluj ,Ro. ,mixed technique on paper, 60/36 cm.

Landscape from Transylvania I , oil on canvas , 80/59 cm.

Bob’s house , mixed technique on paper , 68/53 cm.

Brooklyn Bridge , mixed technique , 80/58 cm.

Landscape from Transylvania III , acryl on canvas , 80/56 cm.

Landscape from Transylvania VI, acryl on canvas , 60/42 cm.

I looked at one landscape and thought of Provence,France…a beautiful place to live a full,meaningful,unfrenzied life…a beautiful place of incredible peace .It was with wonder and a bit of shame that I realized that this gentle man from Romania was showing me Rapid City,South Dakota my home,as he saw it from Dinosaur Hill .
His paintings have a comfortable familiarity to them,,rising I suppose from our familiarity and comfort with the works that have influenced him .What is new and fresh ,however,is the jolting way in which Dumitru Ivan combines shapes ,colors and light in his own ,unique and very personal view of a world and of a people that are completely new to him He sees our everyday life through eyes trained in a centuries-old painterly tradition .His eyes do not see the American West of our own mythology,but a new place,a new home,a new life.Ivan forces us to see it too .He is a painter with something to say and I am ready to listen.
Dr.GRAHAM THATCHER, Author of”I Know What I Like-Everyone’s Guide to the Arts”, excerpt from 1985 Rapid City ,South Dakota exhibition catalog

Dumitru Ivan develops in this last stage of his works a verse from “Green”, the little poem by Verlaine: “Voici des fruits, des fleurs…” However, he is passing it through the feeling of the fruits and “gardens”.
I would say that instead of the nostalgic hyeratism of the poets mentioned, this painter’s colors possess a magnificient heaviness, an oriental one, concentrating this vitality to celebrate a sensual exultation. There is a conscious, tactile joy in the blood red of his apples, the crude green of his landscapes and the shrilling yellow of his flowers. His themes, despite their apparent “humbleness” acquire an aura of fascination.  As in the description of the Sunrise, they are embers, treasures, spellbound objects. Their existence is magical, telling us more than their own short-lived identity. Subtile with his colors, the artist rediscovers essential delights and emotions because he hasn’t forgotten how Verlaine’s verse continues: “Et puis voici mon coeur…”
I evidently suggest only one hypothesis. There could be other meanings to penetrate the painter’s art so baffling through its simplicity, and at the same time so secret through its subtlety. The “Tribuna” Galleries that celebrates the opening of its 19th art show have exhibited a diversity af artists and colleagues through their endeavour of reaching and communicating about the world of beauty. A tradition has been founded almost unintentionally – that of avoiding extremely proffesionalized presentations and using instead poets, writers, and literary critics’ speeches. Thus a communication  was reached being based on the direct emotion expressed without any kind of labels. It is a pleasure to remember that our patrons, Arghezi, Blaga, Adrian Maniu, G. Calinescu and other great writers, had an ideal dialogue with their “seeding” brothers, as Paul Eluard used to name them. An introduction to a book will always be an open door to reading, opened eloquently to love. Consequently, a prologue to an art exhibition tries to place us in the world of shape and colors  aiming to share with us its happiness. Then the specialized critique comes to evaluate the feelings.
Dumitru Ivan’s art conveys the happinessof a tender nature, rediscovering a “feelingness” – as Heliade and Eminescu were calling it, finding a better word for “sensitivity”, which soon turned into “sensiblerie”. As we enter into his world of dreamy flowers and waters in smouldering fires of color, Dumitru Ivan makes us rediscover a beauty they seemed to be long forgotten in the technicality of the daily decor. In other words, he expresses the lost candor of an eyethat sometimes falls absently on things. Nevertheless, his gesture can’t be considered naive of rhetorical. It implies a ceremonial, and a reference to the old masters’ art, which he communicated with over the modern art avatars of today. I find here the artist’s junction with some poets’ calligraphy. That’s why I previously described Dumitru Ivan’s art as similar to poetry. Being a poet of colors, he offers us in the last “Tribuna” art show, twenty open windows to that kind of nature that permanently reminds us that it is alive and it also scolds us that we often forget about its existence.
University Professor MIRCEA ZACIU, literary critic – “Tribuna Galleries”, April 1976

PORTRAIT

Portrait , mixed technique on paper, 30/20 cm.

Portrait , mixed technique on paper, 30/20 cm.

Portrait , mixed technique , 35/24 cm.

Portrait , monotype on paper , 45/35 cm.

Portrait I , mixed technique on paper , 37/28 cm.

Self-portrait , pastel on paper , 40/36 cm.

Self-portrait , oil on canvas , 48/36 cm.

Portrait , sepia drawing on paper , 20/19 cm.

Ria , oil on canvas , 45/37 cm.

My mother , oil on canvas , 51/45 cm.

Portrait II , mixed technique on paper , 37/28 cm.

Lady M.M.’s portrait , oil on canvas , 63/56 cm.

Doina ,oil on canvas , 50/40 cm.

Portrait , sepia drawing on paper , 20/19 cm.

Self-portrait , mixed technique , 33/26 cm.

Portrait , mixed technique on paper , 40/30 cm.

Self-portrait , acryl on canvas , 45/38 cm.

Portrait , pastel on paper , 37/28 cm.

WOMANLY BODY

The Grey Figure of Eve

The first thing that comes to mind when looking at Dumitru Ivan’s paintings is that the artist doesn’t employ the technique used by other painters to suggest, with the aid of perspective, that the world described has a certain depth, namely, a third dimension. The extreme flatness of the image in which the painter seems to totally abandon himself reminds me of the ancient oriental cosmogony where the universe in its absolute entirety is only a very thin and delicate fabric woven at one end by a God-princess while her God-prince is unweaving it from the other end. However, this swinging motion between existence and non-existence is not the most important thing here but the mere fact that the world in its grandiose complexity fits between the two dimensions of this cosmic fabric. And we are just little figures caught in this ethereal tapestry that one God is weaving while the other one is tearing it apart.
Each and every one of the painter’s works is a new and original sequence belonging to the great world show, describing many different games of color in contrasting or harmonious associations. There is music exploding from everywhere: big shiny noisy brasses next to string instruments lamenting with their thin voices or even drums of different sizes and shapes beating rhythmically to create the echo of the whole universe. The colors, or actually the shades that are chosen are instrinsically genuine and also special through their close interconnection. The throbbing volumes perceived by an outlooker, so lively and so tireless in their motion together with an accuracy of the colors are so well dominated and controlled that they reveal the perfect masculinity of their master who is unfolding them skillfully over a whole world of beauty. They are in fact sent out by a God of harmonious colors and are the creation in its own essence, the exclusive esthetic element of the universe.
If we examine these sequences from the world fabric carefully, we will discover or maybe just envision the fact that the rhythmical volumes borrow their shapes from a feminine silhouette that beautifies our lives. There is a permanent display of praise, a eulogy to feminism everywhere you look in these paintings. But isn’t this exactly the starting point of everything there is and has been…? The woman that is Geea- mother-nature is the one we’ve all been coming from. That’s why we will discover in Dumitru Ivan’s canvases not only dancing virgins who broke loose but also a Madonna with the holy baby in her arms, impressive like a prayer in adoration. The meaning of all these is simple. It is one meaning that the arts have always considered as a supreme goal and which only the mathematician-poet has dared to express in words, namely let’s praise the garden of angels at the time when Eve’s smoky appearance is suddenly rising from a rib of man.
ION PAPUC, writer and philosopher

A PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE PARADISE

I am looking at a famous photo,made on the New Year’s Day in 1982,a little while before I left for America .I see myself next to Mirel Zamfirescu,Alin Gheorghiu and Titi Ivan,three artist painters from the time when I began questioning the disappearance of Heaven which I imagined as far away,over the sea,in Atlantis .
Each canvas belonging to them,worth a million words,was fermenting many of the nonabstract concepts of the Old Europe,heavy with meanings,many of them not even translatable .
Alin has left us,so we lost the trails of his “suspended gardens” ,gigantic effort to extend Heaven over Hell .Mirel celebrated his seven decades of existence in 2006,event that I could really grasp by looking at my portrait made by him when we were very young .He had seen me there as a high priest meditating on the danger of the guillotine .
The only one who did not change at all was Titi .He displayed the same amount of grey hair in his beard,the same behavior,reserve,modesty,distinction and aristocratic manners as before .He was extremely proud to come from Cluj,a city we just visited in passing .At the same time he was so calm,almost indifferent and ready to let the others advance but always busy with investigating beauty in all things around .
And recently when I began describing the Paradise and trying to represent it through modest means of natural language ,I could remember neither Alin ,nor Mirel.I was already in New York and Titi was there, next to me .
It is true I had an idea and intuitively guessed about the basic structure of the Paradise while I was growing up on the porch of the Old Church next to the Fire Tower.I have been watching early on how the painter,mastering the Byzantine cannons,has represented the trees from the primordial orchard in his frescoes.Those trees with very thin trunks were supporting rich crowns with an infinity of leaves in a variety of colors because in Paradise according to the logics of the infinite,all the seasons are happening exactly at the same time .
Now when the time came to record our father Adam’s story and Eve’s sons made with Satan,Cain and Abel,I was in great pain to figure out the shades of color of the place where man got closer to Divinity,so close that he could really talk to It .Then Titi Ivan held out the easel once again,offering me the delicate foliage so natural and spontaneous like in a dream .
Nevertheless,that was not all because Eve also appeared in the garden as beautiful and delicate as she has been before she met the serpent,insinuating through the leaves,an only shape that could pass freely through,attractive,non vegetable and as natural as ever .

CONSTANTIN VIRGIL NEGOITA ,University Professor and Writer ,New York ,2007

Nude , drawing in ink on paper ,30/24 cm.

Nude , drawing in ink on paper, 24/18 cm.

Dance , mixed technique on paper , 39/32 cm.

Dance , acryl on black paper , 45/33 cm.

Nude , oil on canvas , 52/43 cm.

Nude , acryl on paper , 33/24 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas , 100/95 cm.

Nude , acryl on paper , 42/31 cm.

Nude , oil on canvas , 80/58 cm.

Composition , black ink on colored paper , 71/52 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas , 110/110 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas , 65/62 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas , 80/60 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas , 52/50 cm.

Rugby , ink on paper , 41/33 cm.

Dance , mixed technique , 60/42 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas , 110/85 cm.

Composition , oil on black paper , 75/52 cm.

Nude , mixed technique on paper , 70/50 cm.

Dance , mixed technique on paper , 80/50 cm.

Nude , drawing in ink on paper, 30/27 cm.

Nude , acryl on paper , 70/49 cm.

Dance , acryl on paper , 39/34 cm.

Dance , acryl on black paper , 45/33 cm.

Dance , acryl on paper , 64/45 cm.

Nude , acryl on paper , 33/24 cm.

Seminude ,oil on canvas , 70/48 cm.

Dance , acryl on paper , 54/32 cm.

Nude , oil on canvas , 77/57 cm.

Dance , ink on paper , 70/50 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas , 70/65 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas , 62/60 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas , 80/61 cm.

Rugby , oil on canvas , 120/120 cm.

Column , oil on canvas ,110/76 cm.

Nude , acryl on paper , 45/37 cm.

Drawing , white tempera on black paper , 80/65 cm.

Drawing , white tempera on black paper, 80/55 cm

Dance , mixed technique on paper, 80/61 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas , 50/34 cm.

Nude, drawing in ink on paper, 30/27 cm.

Nude , acryl on paper , 70/49 cm.

Nude , acryl on paper , 58/37 cm

Nude , oil on canvas , 52/43 cm.

Nude , acryl on paper , 33/24 cm.

Dance , acryl on paper, 51/45 cm.

Nude , acryl on paper , 45/35 cm.

Dance , acryl on paper , 56/35 cm.

Composition , sepia drawing on paper , 120/85 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas , 120/70 cm.

Composition ,oil on canvas , 72/64 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas , 80/62 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas , 120/85 cm.

Rugby , ink on paper , 41/33 cm.

Crucifixion , oil on canvas , 120/100 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas ,100/70 cm.

Composition , oil on canvas , 80/50 cm.