The couple Natalia Dumitrescu – Alexandru Istrati: art, love, and Brâncuși's lesson
Source: Curatorial - Who were Brâncuși's heirs
Two fates born in the same year, united by the same calling
Natalia Dumitrescu (December 20, 1915, Bucharest – July 3, 1997, Chars) and Alexandre Istrati (March 9, 1915, Dorohoi – October 28, 1991, Paris) appear in art history as the most important Romanian-French couple after 1945. Both established themselves as abstract painters, received the Kandinsky Prize in two different editions (1953 and 1955) and – a rare fact – became the universal legatees of the sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, whose studio and archive they managed. Since 1977, their names have been definitively linked to the reconstruction of Brâncuși's Studio at the Centre Pompidou, and since 1997 they share the same crypt with their mentor in Montparnasse Cemetery.
Source: Galerie Hervé Courtaigne
Source: Wikiart
Natalia's training - The Academy of Fine Arts and the first geometric rigors
From 1935-1939, Dumitrescu attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest in the class of Francisc Șirato, a professor known for drawing discipline and emphasis on structural compositions. There, she established her admiration for Kandinsky and practiced an austere, predominantly black and white language, based on orthogonal grids that would later remain the skeleton of all her colorful works.
Natalia Dumitrescu - Nude in the studio
Istrati's training - Law as an intermezzo, painting as a vocation
Alexandre Istrati studied Law at the University of Bucharest (bachelor's degree, 1937) but, at the same time, frequented the studio of master Camil Ressu at the same Academy of Arts, obtaining his painting diploma in 1938. Between 1938 and 1947, he remained a university assistant to Ressu, a period during which he combined chromatic research with an early gestural technique, exhibiting his first works at the "Official Salon" (1941) and at Sala Dalles.
Alexandru Istrati - Self-portrait, 1947
Marriage and early Bucharest exhibitions
Married in 1939, Natalia and Alexandru established themselves in a city that still breathed the interwar avant-garde: she exhibited at Sala Dalles in 1946, he opened his first solo exhibition in 1941, and in the Academy's studios they prepared courses and public demonstrations together. However, the war and cultural isolation after 1945 transformed Bucharest into a confined space. Salvation came in the form of a French scholarship; in the early summer of 1947, they packed their works – predominantly monochrome for Natalia, gestural for Istrati – and boarded the train to Paris, convinced that Western Europe would understand abstract language more quickly.
Alexandru Istrati - Peasants in the field, first half of the 1940s
Natalia Dumitrescu - Composition, 1957
Natalia Dumitrescu - Untitled
Impasse Ronsin, the threshold to Brâncuși and global modernism
In their first year in Paris, they attended courses at the André Lhote Academy and the École des Beaux-Arts, quickly adapting to the post-war Parisian scene. In 1948, the couple rented a workspace at 11 bis Impasse Ronsin, right next to Constantin Brâncuși's studio. According to Jody Klotz's catalog, the sculptor, recognizing their discipline and affection, accepted them as neighbors and collaborators; the two worked in this arrondissement until Brâncuși's death on March 16, 1957.
In 1949, Istrati opened his first solo exhibition at Galerie Breteau, followed by Natalia's exhibitions at Breteau and Arnaud in 1950-1954, a fact reported by the art press of the time.
Brâncuși's testamentary executors
In 1953, the notarial act drafted by Brâncuși named "les jeunes Roumains" as his universal legatees: they were responsible for preserving the sculptures, photographic negatives, and personal archive. Upon the master's death on March 16, 1957, the task became official and controversial: on the one hand, the two transferred hundreds of pieces to the French state; on the other hand, restricting access for researchers led to press investigations and lawsuits in the 1990s regarding copyright. However, without their devotion, the studio would have been dismantled; the couple kept it intact until its reconstruction in 1977.
Natalia Dumitrescu - Voyage, Light Blue
Reconstruction of Brâncuși's Studio (Centre Pompidou, 1977)
Invited by curator Pontus Hultén, Natalia and Alexandru supervised the reassembly of the studio in the square in front of the new Centre Pompidou. 137 sculptures, 87 pedestals, and over 1,600 photographic negatives were redistributed in exactly the same topography as in Impasse Ronsin. For the first time, the public saw "Bird in Space," "Sleeping Muse," and Brâncuși's workbench in one place. The opening in 1977 transformed the space into an unprecedented museological anchor, and the couple into official guardians of Brâncuși's memory.
Alexandru Istrati - Concentration
Natalia's trajectory in abstract-geometric art
In the 1950s, after participating in the first editions of Réalités Nouvelles, the painter abandoned monochrome and introduced the square as a poetic unit: ordered grids, subtle vibrations, contrasts of shadows and translucent planes. "Color, as an inner resonance, dictated my form," she noted in a 1960 notebook. The Kandinsky Prize (1955) and Carnegie Prize (1959) confirmed the authenticity of her vision.
Today, on www.artiss.ro, "Blue Composition," "Galaxy," "Voyage, Light Blue," and "Embroidery" can be admired – works that show the evolution from rigor to chromatic lyricism.
Istrati and Tachisme
Alexandre Istrati embraced a purely gestural language: free brushstrokes, tempera splashes, sand, and viscous oil raised in relief, without preliminary drawing. The Kandinsky Prize in 1953 opened the doors to the Salon d'Octobre, then, between 1955 and 1965, to the Réalités Nouvelles committee, and after 1965, to the Comparaisons jury. On www.artiss.ro, canvases such as "Composition (1962)," "Galaxy," and "Vertical Composition" confirm his fascination with density and energy, firmly anchoring him in Tachisme and Lyrical Abstraction.
Alexandru Istrati - Abstract Composition
Exhibitions, awards and international networks
Between 1950 and 1980, Dumitrescu and Istrati participated in over 120 events. Natalia exhibited in Brussels (1956) and Cologne (1960), and Istrati at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, Fondation Maeght, and Hirshhorn Museum. Both appeared in the Kunsthalle Mannheim catalog (1963) and in the programming of gallerist Margarete Lauter, extending their network from Paris to Germany, the United States, and Japan.
Alexandru Istrati - Red and Blue
Monograph "Brâncuși" (1987)
In 1987, Pontus Hultén, Natalia Dumitrescu, and Alexandre Istrati published a seminal monograph on Brâncuși in Stuttgart. The volume, subsequently cited by the bibliographies of the Centre Pompidou, brought together for the first time the complete corpus of studio photographs, based on the archive the couple had maintained since 1957.
Istrati continued to exhibit until 1990, including in Tokyo and Caracas, and Dumitrescu received an important retrospective in Basel in 1985.
Legacy
Alexandre Istrati passed away on October 28, 1991, and Natalia Dumitrescu on July 3, 1997. According to their wishes, both are interred in the same crypt as Brâncuși, in plot 30 of Montparnasse Cemetery. From the preservation of the master's sculptures to the definition of post-war abstraction, the couple's contribution remains an essential landmark for 20th-century art history.
Written by Artiss Gallery
