Florica Fărcașu
In Contemporary Jewellery. A critical assessment 1945-1975, Ralph Turner mentioned a Romanian contemporary jeweller for the first and last time in a book published in the West until 2016, when on the cover of the New Necklaces book of Nicolas Estrada it was a piece made by Raluca Buzura.
”As in the rest of Europe, the Socialist countries had had their pioneers, such as Florica Farcasu from Bucharest. Since her student days in the thirties her work has been exhibited widely throughout Europe, with numerous awards and distinctions. Essentially Romanian in Spirit, her early work draws on folk art, and when describing her thoughts she refers to the elements of nature as motivating her ideas. Her work resembles that of Gerda Flöckinger but unlike this artist, Florica Farcasu s images are primarily two- dimensional. Both, however, have an interest in a sense of balance. With little doubt she loves her work and the materials she uses: I apply the goldsmith s technique to the noble wire, which I direct pursuing, through storms of ascendant circles and spirals, the mysterious way through constellations…”
Andrei Vespremie
Alexandra Chiriac, in her book Performing Modernism. A Jewish Avant-Garde in Bucharest, ”introduces the little known and often misidentified Andrei Vespremie who established the Academy of Decorative Arts in 1924 with financial backing from Heinrich Fischer-Galaţi, the scion of a wealthy German family arrived in Romania in 1866 in the entourage of prince Carol of Hohenzollern later crowned king of Romania. It was Vespremie who was the Academy’s original director and organiser, and quite probably Maxy’s teacher in metalwork. A Hungarian Jew from Transylvania, educated in Budapest and then Berlin, Vespremie modelled the Academy after the Schule Reimann in Berlin and not the Bauhaus in Weimar. After three years at the Academy’s helm, Vespremie left Bucharest for Latvia. Then, in 1927, Maxy took over the leadership of the Academy of Decorative Arts. In Riga Vespremie taught art at Jewish gymnasia, and became part of Latvia’s modernist art scene. He was murdered in the Kaiserwald concentration camp near Riga during the Holocaust. Out of sight, out of mind, one might say. Vespremie was forgotten in Romania after his departure”
”Vespremie’s skill in ivory is also documented in his report card from the Schule Reimann and he may well have found inspiration in Peche’s designs for elaborate jewellery. He later included jewellery-making in his ivorywork course at the Academy”
