3. Self-Portrait - Corneliu Baba
This painting is called Self-Portrait and was created by the painter Corneliu Baba. The artist was born in 1906, in Craiova, and passed away in 1997, in Bucharest. His father, Gheorghe, was a church painter, so Corneliu had contact with painting from an early age. It is important to note that the artist lived and created throughout the communist period in Romania, a very difficult era for society as a whole. For artists especially, the lack of freedom of expression, censorship, and the pressure to compromise were constant sources of tension.
Under communism, success could only be achieved if one managed to preserve inner freedom without coming into direct conflict with the system. All these conditions left their mark on his entire artistic work — in the themes he chose, their manner of representation, and the symbolism of the elements in his paintings. Corneliu Baba remains in history as an artist renowned for his portraits and as one of the most important Romanian painters of the 20th century. He has 466 works recorded in the MutualArt database and a collection of 80 works at the National Museum of Art of Timișoara.
Corneliu Baba painted several self-portraits. In this one, dated 1991, he depicts himself at the age of 85. The work is executed in oil on canvas and portrays the painter’s figure down to the waist. The general impression is that the painting expresses a mixture of inner tension and fragility, hidden behind an apparently calm image.
In the painting, there is a single figure — the painter himself. Corneliu Baba depicts himself in late maturity, seen from the front, from the waist up. The background, without objects or decoration, is rendered with a matte texture. In front of the figure, in the lower right corner of the composition, there is a table with three objects: a bell, a die, and a half-open notebook.
On his head, the painter wears a cap, depicted with a fine texture, from which strands of hair emerge. His face is tired, almost dramatic, giving the impression of a life lived intensely. The face and hands have a smooth surface. The face is oval, surrounded by a thin beard. His hair is long, reaching his ears, and falls in loose strands on both sides of his face. His gaze is fixed and serious, looking straight ahead, toward us. His mouth is slightly open, as if conveying feelings of awe and fear at the same time.
He is dressed in a loose, simple painter’s smock, suggesting modesty and a life devoted to the studio. The smock has a rough texture. The artist’s left hand, rendered with a smooth surface and outlined by a raised line, is lifted and open toward us, with fingers spread apart. The gesture is ambiguous — somewhere between blessing, warning, and halting. This gesture is common in painting tradition, where a raised hand often signifies blessing or protection. In this painting, however, the gesture seems more like a sign of stopping, of setting a boundary.
In his right hand, also rendered with a smooth texture, the artist holds a paintbrush. The handle of the brush is long, drawn with a thick, straight line, while the tip is represented by several fine lines imitating the bristles. The artist holds the brush between his index finger, middle finger, and thumb. The other two fingers are bent and only half visible, thus appearing shorter.
In the lower right corner, there is a small table covered with a tablecloth, depicted with a fine texture. On it rests a bell. The bell is outlined with a thick, raised line and has a smooth interior; at the top, it has a small loop. The bell may symbolize the passage of time, just as church bells ring in the steeple to mark the passing of hours. It may also have a personal meaning, relating to the painter’s age and the inevitable approach of life’s end. There is also the idea that it could carry a political meaning — a reference to the transition into a new era, the post-revolutionary one, after the 1989 Revolution.
Next to the bell, toward the right edge of the painting, there is a die. It is outlined by a thin line and has a smooth surface. The arrangement of dots on its faces is not visible, since the painter deliberately blended the colors, but the upward-facing side — the one that “counts” — appears to have a single dot. The die often symbolizes chance in paintings, as it is commonly found in games of luck. In this case, it shows the smallest possible value: one. This is clearly a symbolic message that the painter wanted to convey indirectly, leaving us to ponder its deeper meaning.
On the same table, slightly to the right and higher up, there is also a half-open notebook. It is outlined with a thin line and has a smooth surface. On one of the notebook’s pages — the most visible one — appears the artist’s signature, Baba, and the date of the painting: ‘91.
“When I climb up on the big crate and start working on the characters in my compositions, I transform. I think only of things that transcend these petty worries about pleasing. My painting is not meant to please, but to move — through great human and artistic values”
said Corneliu Baba in Confessions and Journals (1965–1977).