George Ștefănescu

George Ştefănescu-Râmnic (20 April 1914 – 29 October 2007) was a contemporary Romanian painter.

Radu Carneci wrote of him in 1984:

George Ştefănescu is a great colorist who dares bring together intense colours, as though recalling the fauvistes' age. He does it with a secret harmony descended from both the knowledge of the graphics' progress and from the inheritance creatively used, of painting on glass and other folk Romanian arts.

Thus, the painter has reached a synthesis of the artistic work, with the colour, though important as it is, left in the second plane, meant to support and illustrate the idea.

In this case, the colour plays the same part as with flowers – luring us so that we may better feel their essences, their fragrance.

George Ştefănescu was born in 1914 in the commune of Plăineşti (now Dumbrăveni, Vrancea), between the cities of Focşani and Râmnicu Sărat. His father Gheorghe was descended from a Macedonian family from Bitola, Macedonia. His mother, Sanda, born Căţănaru, was originally from the commune of Crucea de Jos, Vrancea County. From 1926 to 1933 he attended the secondary school in Râmnicu Sărat. His art teacher recommended him to the church painter Constantinescu and he became the latter's apprentice after school. In 1933, after receiving his baccalaureate, he moved to Bucharest. He took lessons with the painter Ion Theodorescu-Sion, a noted personality in the Romanian art world, for the entrance examination of the Academy of Creative Arts. From 1933 to 1936 he studied at the Academy of Creative Arts in Bucharest in the class of the painter Nicolae Dărăscu.

In 1936, he had his first solo exhibition in a Bucharest art gallery, and also took a study trip to Vrancea and Balcic. In 1937 he attended artillery officer's school, had an exhibition in Craiova with the writer Ion Ionescu; the latter presented his novel Oameni cu buche ("Men with books" / "Literate men"). That year, he also began to sketch designs for women's clothing and fashion accessories for a Bucharest fashion house. He worked for the construction company SONACO, became a member of Sindicatul Artistilor din România (the Union of Romanian Artists, which included painters, sculptors and graphic artists) and because a student at the well-known private art seminar "Zapan". His professors there were well-known painters such as Lucian Grigorescu, Platon Cazanovici and Mihail Gheorghita.

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