It was not so long ago that I visited my very first art museum. I’ve seen paintings and works or art here and there, but I’ve never stood still in front of one, looking at all the details, trying to figure out what the artist was trying to say.

I was pleasantly surprised to feel that very thing happening to me at that art museum, and it wasn’t while I was looking at well known paintings by famous artists, but while looking at paintings by one of our own painters, Corneliu Baba. I’d never heard of him before, and I didn’t really know too much about art to begin with, but his paintings impressed me to the core.

At first, I didn’t like them. I had only glanced at them, and when seeing the dark colors and the expressions of pure horror on the painted faces, I felt repulsion and disgust. It was as if I was watching a murder played out in front of me. Then, I noticed many more paintings, all in the same style, by the same painter. I was intrigued. I thought ,with little art knowledge I had, that most artists vary their styles, using multitudes of colors and variations in themes. These paintings however all looked the same: dark, depressing, with the same tones and the same colors.

This made me curious. What made this painter have to express such things in this way? I noticed more and more datails: the way he painted people’s faces without putting any accent on the eyes, as if they didn’t have any at all. It made me feel like they were hollow like ghosts, soulless, lifeless people, empty shells. Some paintings, like “Fear” (“Spaima”), were showing people with twisted faces, contorted bodies, all in dark colors and without many details. This made me actually feel the fear and terror. Most of the paintings showed people with no  eyes, with opened mouths, as if they were blind and praying, without any hope or light in their lives. I also noticed that in many of his works, Baba was portraying the typical Romanian peasant during the typical Romanian day (at work, around the table with the rest of the family).

You might want to ask me what could possibly be so interesting in all these paintings? Well, for me at least, it was the intrigue and the curiosity that I felt looking at them and that kept me interested, painting after painting after painting. What did he want to share through such grotesque images, through the eyeless faces, and most of all, why did he chose to portray such “negative” things? What was it from his own life, that affected him, that marked him and made him to chose this particular style? Whatever it was, Baba managed to transfer these emotions to his paintings and was able to affect, in return,  everyone that has a chance to see his art.