Victor Roman, La Porte, bronze sculpture, 1983

Victor Roman, signed, numbered and documented.

Bronze sculpture on a rectangular travertin base representing an arch flanked by two removable semi-circle panels. Inside the arch, two other removable semi-circle are placed, forming the door, each decorated with four points in relief, set vertically for one and horizontally for the other.

Signed on the base, bottom right “Victor Roman” and numbered 2/6.

Work realized in 1983.

Sculpture reproduced here in : Victor Roman, ouvrage monographique, Éditions Adam Biro, Paris, 1996, p.14 et 58

Dimensions : H 43 x W 75 x D 40 cm.

Reference : LS40784051

Victor Roman (1937-1995) was a sculptor born in 1937 in Romania, in a farmer’s family. Since he was six, he molded clay and sold his sculptures at village fairs. In 1954, he was admitted to the Bucharest Institute of Plastic Arts and he was graduated from Beaux-Arts in 1960. In 1961, the Bucharest National Museum bought him a plaster bust. In 1963 he began abstraction and went study in London in 1967 at the Royal College. Then he reached France where he got asylum and a workshop in the Artists hamlet of Nogent-sur-Marne.
He obtained the French nationality and realized few sculptures for French institutions near Paris: La Victoire, in bronze for Bobigny City Hall or a sculpture for the scholar group of Mantes-la-Jolie, or others sculptures for Créteil, Saint-Quentin en Yvelines ou Marne-la-Vallée.
He was exhibited at several collective shows: Salon des Réalités Nouvelles (de 1972 à 1979) ; Paris Biennale (1961) ; Paris FIAC (1979, 1981) ; Art Basel (1970,1971), etc. He also showed its artworks at personal exhibitions in Romania (1962, 1965), London (1968), Roma (1966) or also Paris (1973, 1975, 1978, 1984).
He participated to the FIAC in 1979 with the Jacqueline Blanquet gallery. In 1994 he is nominated Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (French distinction, word by word *Knight of Arts and Letters) by Jacques Toubon and suddenly died the following year in Paris.

About his work, Victor Roman said it was the symbol of a certain calm, a certain way of existing compared to the nature and God. His works are the testimony of the searching for a balance between the world and the society.
To express this balance and this quest, he needed a language; Victor Roman’s alphabet was made of circles, squares, rectangles and triangles. His favorite material was clay, in memory of his childhood. Clay allowed him more formal freedom and reminded him of a living thing.
For resistance needs through time, space and to support big weight and huge volumes, his pieces were mostly destined to be bronze casted. According to him, the best final location for a sculpture was as important as the sculpture itself: the sculpture has to catch the light; it’s only possible if it’s already “lit in the inside”. For Victor Roman: “the best place for a sculpture is in the sun, in a dialogue with the sky and the Earth”.

Sources :

• Victor Roman, ouvrage monographique, Éditions Adam Biro, Paris, 1996
• E. BENEZIT, Dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs, Gründ, 1999, t.11, p.859 et 860