Constantin Flondor. ”Among the artists exhibited I remember Rothko, Frank Stella, Kooning, Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Mark Tobey, Achile Gorki, Cy Twombly, Claes Oldenburg, and so on.”

 Constantin Flondor, b. 1936, artist

1. What American art exhibitions did you see between 1965 and 1989?

Two American exhibitions in Timișoara, in 1969 and 1971.

1. In 1969, sometime in February, at the Banat Huniade Museum, Contemporary American Art Exhibition, the catalogue (lost) had on the cover a detail from The Flag by Jasper Johns. 

Among the artists exhibited I remember Rothko, Frank Stella, Kooning, Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Mark Tobey, Achile Gorki, Cy Twombly, Claes Oldenburg, and so on. 

The opening was attended by the US ambassador Richard Davis, the cultural attaché Harry G. Barnes, the whole staff. 

Having been informed about the activity (in Bucharest) of our group 111, we were contacted because they wanted to visit all three of us (Cotoșman, Bertalan, Flondor). Barnes, the diplomat, came to my studio just as I was preparing my work for the Nuremberg Biennale. He saw how precarious all our packing materials were and offered to help with the ones they had brought (four square meters of foil, cardboard, and other materials that weren't available here, like bubble wrap). That's how I met and befriended the exhibition commissioners, namely Tom Freudenheim and his wife Leslie, both art critics and historians. 

On this occasion, we visited each other at home and at their hotel. Before we left for Germany and Belgium, they recommended some places to visit: the city of Bruges, a Northern Venice, or N. Schöffer's cybernetic towers in Liège. I met ambassador Davis, along with Barnes, at some movie screenings at the CFR Club and then we had dinner together. 

In the fall of 1969, once the 111 group had broken up, I founded the SIGMA group with Ștefan Bertalan, recruiting some fresh graduates from Cluj, young art teachers. 

2. In 1971, the US Architecture Exhibition opened in an inadequate space (the sports hall next to the Continental Hotel). The US ambassador Leonard C. Meeker coincided with the high school students' exhibition from the Arts High School at the Banat Huniade Museum; it was a redo of the widely seen exhibition in Bucharest (at the C pavilion in Herăstrău Park), as a plea for the Education Minister's approval for the high school's experimental program. All of Sigma were there. For me, as the principal, the ambassador showing up at the Museum and his interest in what he saw prompted me to invite him to the high school to see more work and talk to the students (an incident that would later have decisive repercussions on the part of Inspector General Radu Petru and the decision to alert state security). A few minutes later, a long, black car stopped in front of the high school. The high school specialized workshops were on high alert. The students' work surprised the ambassador and the cultural attaché, as they all had to do with the relationship between art and science, with references to the Nuremberg Biennale's theme, Elements and Principles. At the end, the students offered the guests a painting. After that, the embassy supported the high school for a couple of years, offering specialty books, especially on architecture (Saarinen, Wright, Schoeffer, etc.), records (electronic renditions of Bach...). Together with Dr. Eduard Pamfil, the Sigma group, and our wives, we were invited to lunch at the Continental Hotel restaurant. Next to our table, about four meters away, there was another table of "listeners", which I confirmed a few years later when I was interrogated about what was discussed at that table!

The architecture exhibition consisted of a kind of labyrinth of panels, a history of American architecture. Of course, it was richly documented, and we were especially interested in the images and information on Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome at Black Mountain, architect and designer Eero Saarinen, Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius...

The security services' interrogations became more and more frequent. 

2. Between 1965 and 1989, did you see American art in Romania or abroad?

Before the Revolution in 1989, I only went to the West once, the time I attended the Nuremberg Biennale. Our only sources were magazines, books, and the newly introduced Italian TV channels which we got via Serbia. 

In Timișoara, the two exhibitions I mentioned, and at the Nuremberg Biennale of Constructive Art in 1969 (Robert Huot, R. Mangold, David Novros, Tony Smith). 

In Brussels, that same year, I saw some works by famous artists in the private collection of an American collector. For example, Roy Lichtenstein — life-size characters painted on a mirrored wall, or white furniture by Saarinen (Finland), a flattened Arman piano that functioned as a bar, a Calder that covered two floors. In Vienna, in 1969, I also visited the Museum of Modern Art and Design. 

3. Which American artists and what American approaches/trends/styles interested you at the time?

Although I was aware of those sacred monsters shown in Timișoara, we were mostly concerned with constructive, optical, kinetic art. So abstract expressionist or pop art American painting didn't directly influence me (us). I was more interested in the artists that worked in three dimensions, with new techniques and technologies (lights, optical wires, neon, photoelectric cells), maths and cybernetics. International approaches and styles changed and confronted each other very quickly in those years.

4. What position did American art and visual culture have in the artistic milieu you frequented at the time; was it a topic of conversation, was it influential?

Please compare it with the influence of European art or art from communist spaces.

We were aware of the shift of the central pole from Paris to New York, but I was more interested in that confluence of art and architecture, technics, geometry, science, interdisciplinarity, theories the Sigma group engaged with and even applied at the high school.

5. Retrospectively, do you think that American art and visual culture were a decisive factor in your development as an artist/theoretician?

See question 4. Between 1970 and 1975, by way of the books and record donated by the US embassy. Especially regarding architecture, cybernetics, and art's interaction with science. 

6. Did the American art exhibitions organized in Romania during that period contribute decisively in this sense, or did the information you had about American art and visual culture in general contribute more to this impact?

The latter.

7. Do you remember whether the presentation and reception of American art and visual culture were encouraged by the communist regime?

1968-1977 was a time of political laxity which we took advantage of. These exhibitions took place alongside presidents R. Nixon (1969) and G. Ford's (1975) visits. 

Just like in any other domain at the time, there was constant surveillance, but I can say we didn't think about the consequences we could suffer, we endured reprimands, threats, interrogations, investigations. As an artist, teacher, and high school principal, I did what I thought was right: I issued invitations, organized visits, maintained correspondences. 

Anyway, my naïvety saved me and encouraged me in many ways. 

Note: When the members of the Sigma group were part of a Ministry delegation in 1972, we called the US ambassador Leonard Meeker from a payphone and he invited us to dinner: pleasant atmosphere, stereo electronic music, discussions about art and architecture; on his walls, I saw work by some famous American artists (we were invited for dinner, at a table over eight meters long, and served small delicacies in cups by a woman who spoke Romanian very well and was very gracious to us, but I later understood there was a lot of coldness there too), and in the end the ambassador himself personally drove us to the train station. Even though nobody knew about our visit, as soon as I got home in the morning I got a call from that same Ministry and from the Timiș County Inspector asking (pointedly) what on earth we were doing there!?! Luckily for me, in the Ministry of Education at that time were people like Mircea Malița, minister, Mihai Șora, adjunct minister, and Nicolae Filoteanu, inspector general. 

8. Was being a sympathizer of American art esthetically/ideologically/politically risky?

9. Retrospectively, do you think the influence of American art and visual culture on Romanian art and visual culture between 1965 and 1989 contributed to the transformation/development of Romanian culture and society? If so, in what way?

Insofar as some artists did adopt American abstract expressionism, even just in their studio, it's possible it did have an influence. 

Us, in Timișoara (Sigma, the Arts High School), lived and breathed a different atmosphere (= Germany: Gropius's Bauhaus school, P. Klee and W. Kandinsky's texts; France: The Visual Research Group; and, naturally, the architecture of America and Japan (Osaka), Germany, Finland). 

Timișoara, March 23rd 2023 Constantin Flondor