Witte Gallery

We are happy to invite you to the opening of Three Shades of Romanian History, the first exhibition to mark the inauguration of our newly opened space in Ulft,Netherlands.

In modern European history, Romania is the only country that during the last 100 years, since the dawn of its formation, had no fewer than three authoritarian regimes. Only relatively recently, after the fall of the communist regime and the instauration of an open democratic society, it became possible to interrogate the forces that shaped our current society. We will follow this historical path, which seen from today’s perspective resembles the Nietzschean concept of the eternal return, through the works of three established contemporary Romanian artists.

The constant dialogue between the subjective and the objective states of memory is evident in Pandele Pandele large-scale canvas, in which a scene from the Second World War is transfigured into a playground for plastic toys soldiers, the only toys to be found in the newly opened capital market. At the opposite end of the scale, Andrei Tudoran conducts from an almost sociological stance an investigation of the symbols, the statuses and the debris of the social fears that the communist regime instilled. They are regarded as continuations, insidiously passed along underneath the fabric of the newly formed democratic structures. Last but not least, Dan Raul Pintea takes it upon himself to depict the present society, using the materials and means of image production, for which the impact of social media is crucial in that it defines an alternative society based on social leftist and anarchist political views – mere reactions to the current political climate operating in the realm of the world wide web.

Ernst Vijlbrief (1934,Utrecht -Ernst Vijlbrief (1934,Utrecht -Ernst Vijlbrief (1934,Utrecht - 2010, Amsterdam).


He was a contemporary Dutch art painter and graphic artist.
His early works were related to the avant-garde Cobra painters of the 1950s, with whom he occasionally exhibited together.
Ernst Vijlbrief was sympathetic with the pre-revolutionary punk and artistic youth of the Provo movement from the mid-60s and he was involved in the 1969 art happenings from Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

His versatile work (abstract, expressionist, figurative, improvisations) is included in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen and the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam.

Vijlbrief's works are sold on the art market and galleries all over the world and at reputed auction houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's.

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