La Blouse Roumaine exhibition: from Romanian national dress to Henri Matisse’s art

The first event of this series is marked by the opening of the exhibition titled ‘La Blouse Roumaine’ displaying pieces of Romanian national dress of the collection belonging to Engineer Cristian Pascu, president of the Dorul Romanian Christian Society, which was founded in New York in 1903 under the name of the Carmen Sylva Romanian National Club. The exhibition will be housed by the gallery of ICR in New York and will be accompanied by a visual presentation, which makes the Romanian national dress be included in a context in the more extensive sphere of the national and international culture.

The exhibition shows 25 Romanian national costumes (on dummies) and in parallel explores, by means of a slideshow, the role played by the traditional dress in Romanian fine arts, especially in the interwar years, but also in giving the public or private image to Queens Elisabeta and Marie. The above-mentioned event also revels the status of the national costume as a national heritage item exhibited in museums nowadays or as a source of inspiration for such famous fashion designers as Yves Saint Laurent.

The exhibition will be open till June 17, 2013.

The event mentioned before is part of the series of current tendencies of promoting the Romanian national dress such as the recent presentation of some pieces of the Romanian national costume on the site of the New York Metropolitan Museum and takes place almost simultaneously with the concert titled ‘The Beatles Interpreted by Bucharest Symphony Orchestra’ at the Palace Hall, in which the instrumentalists will wear Romanian blouses. In the same respect the online community La Blouse Roumaine, which includes more than 18,000 members, suggests this kind of blouse, the Romanian traditional blouse, as Romania’s country brand and will organize the Universal Day of the Romanian Blouse on June 24, concurrently with the Midsummer Day.

A significant visual counterpart, a digital one too, is the series of portraits featuring the Romanian blouse by French painter Henri Matisse, which is largely due to his friendship with Romanian painter Theodor Pallady. Actually the event mentioned above has the name of one of the best known paintings of this series.

Organizing these events also implies cooperation with the Dimitrie Gusti Village Museum, the Museum of the Romanian Peasant and other ethnographic museums in Romania by organizing some exhibitions and symposia devoted to the relations between the Romanian traditional arts, the avant-garde currents and art creation. AGERPRES