Bucharest Garden

A 1992 diptych composed of two oil paintings on canvas by Romanian painter Ioan Traian Mârza (born 1958), depicting Cișmigiu Gardens in Bucharest. Located in the heart of the city, Cișmigiu is Bucharest’s oldest public garden, developed in the 19th century around its lake.

The two canvases form a single composition. The sweeping branch of a tree visually connects the two panels, while at the center, the pond continues from one canvas to the other around a flower-covered stone island that anchors the composition. The movement of the water and floating foliage further reinforces this continuity, as do the touches of yellow flowers across the central island. Together, the two canvases place the viewer at the heart of the water, creating a true sense of immersion. The abundant vegetation surrounding it limits the depth of the scene and continually draws the eye back toward the pond, its reflections, and the central island.

This is a powerful Post-Impressionist work, both in its technique and visual impact. The paint is generously applied, worked in places with a palette knife and, above all, through a succession of thick, short, and very free brushstrokes. Forms are rarely confined by precise outlines: they emerge directly from color and texture. Nuances are juxtaposed to bring the water, foliage, and flowers into view. From a distance, the landscape comes together; up close, the painting moves almost toward abstraction.

This freedom of execution creates a constant sense of movement across the two canvases. The water seems to vibrate through the nuances of color, while the vegetation itself appears animated by the texture and movement of the brushwork. Rather than precisely describing the garden, Mârza seems to capture the sensation of it: a dense, luminous, and shifting natural world in which texture, light, and color seem to flow from one canvas to the other.

About the artist:

Ioan Traian Mârza, also known as Traian Mârza, is a Romanian painter born in 1958 in Galtiu, in the Alba region. After early training in painting, graphic arts, and photography in Alba Iulia, he studied painting at the Academy of Art in Bucharest from 1990 to 1996. He later continued his academic studies, earning a doctorate in visual arts from the West University of Timișoara.

His work, which includes landscapes, portraits, and still lifes, has been presented in numerous exhibitions in Romania and abroad. Mârza participated in the Transylvanian Art Salon in Alba Iulia, and his work was more recently exhibited at the Octavian Moșescu Municipal Museum in Râmnicu Sărat. He has also received several distinctions in France, including the Lefranc Bourgeois Prize in Thiais in 1995, an Encouragement Prize in Thiais in 1997, and a silver medal in Choisy-le-Roi in 1998. His works are represented in public and private collections in Romania, as well as in numerous countries across Europe, North America, and Asia.