Valentina Rusu-Ciobanu

Valentina Rusu-Ciobanu (b. 28 October 1920, Chișinău – d. 1 November 2021, Chișinău) was a Bessarabian visual artist, considered the most important woman painter of Bessarabia. Her work stands out for its unconventional and innovative expressive means, but also for a profound poetic note. She lived more than a hundred years, crossing — and bearing witness to, through her art — the entire turbulent history of the 20th century.

Training

She attended the fine arts courses of the School of Fine Arts in Chișinău, in the class of the professors Alexandru Plămădeală and August Baillayre (1938–1940), and in the early 1940s she continued her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Iași. These roots shaped a solid artistic vision in which academic rigour was interwoven with a permanent search for innovation.

Her work

Together with Mihai Grecu, Valentina Rusu-Ciobanu laid the foundations of the higher school of fine arts in Chișinău. The style she adopted could be „read”, in the era of the Soviet regime, as a subtle subversion of the canons of socialist realism — a risk the artist assumed. Among her best-known works are „Fetiță la fereastră” (Girl at the Window, 1957), „Portretul lui Emil Loteanu” (Portrait of Emil Loteanu, 1964), „Foc de artificii” (Fireworks, 1966) and „Vizita doctorului” (The Doctor's Visit, 1971).

Recognition

She was a laureate of the State Prize of the Moldavian SSR (1974), Merited Master of Art (1980) and People's Artist (1985). In 1996 she received the „Order of the Republic”, and in 2020 she was awarded by the president of Romania the Order „Cultural Merit” in the rank of Grand Officer. Her works, exhibited at home and abroad, are held at the National Art Museum of Moldova. Valentina Rusu-Ciobanu died in 2021, only a few days after turning 101, leaving behind a body of work fundamental to national fine art.

A life as long as a century

Through her life and her work, Valentina Rusu-Ciobanu crossed the whole of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, being both witness and pictorial chronicler of the transformations of Bessarabia. Her exceptional longevity — over 101 years — was matched by uninterrupted creativity and a constant search for the new. Recognised both in the Republic of Moldova and in Romania, she remains the most important woman painter of Bessarabia, and her works, held at the National Art Museum, are studied as landmarks of Moldovan modernism in the fine arts.