Vasile Hutopilă

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Vasile Hutopilă (Ukrainian: Васи́ль Дми́трович Гутопи́ла) born March 17, 1953 in Izvoarele Sucevei (Ізвори), Suceava County, Bukovina, Romania, is a contemporary Romanian painter of Ukrainian (Hutsul) ethnicity. His works belong to impressionism.

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[edit] Early years

Vasile Hutopilă grew up in the superbe mountain village Izvoarele Sucevei (Izvory), among his Hutsul co-ethnics. He was taught the Romanian language in school, while his native language was the Hutsul dialect of Ukrainian. He also speaks Polish, at a near-native level. As a teenager, he showed more interest in rock music than in the arts. In fact, he was a member of one of the first rock bands in Bukovina, together with Gică Bazon Daşchievici (drums), Mirel Bolohan (guitar and vocals) and Emil Miluţ Costea (bass and vocals). He played the guitar and his nickname was Rusu, which in Romanian means the Russian, because of his Slavic affiliation. The band didn't have a name; it was just the Pioneers' House band. They were influenced by bands such as Czerwone Gitary, 2 plus 1 (both Polish), The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Transsylvania Phoenix. They sang together for about four years; after the band broke up, each member continued in his own direction.

[edit] The mirage of Braşov

Vasile Hutopila - Autumn in Bukovina / oil on canvas, 1993
Vasile Hutopila - Autumn in Bukovina / oil on canvas, 1993

For young Vasile Hutopilǎ, that was Braşov, one of the most important cultural centres in Transylvania, thanks to his first guide in matter of arts, the extremely talented Bukovinian painter Mircea Rotaru. Hutopilǎ studied there with professors Alexandrina Gheţie and Bella Klement, but his real guide in painture was Neculai Codreanu, who became also his best friend. In Braşov, Vasile Hutopilǎ became very close to other important names in the Romanian painture: Eftimie Modâlcǎ (1936 - 1991) and Grigore Zincovsky. Hutopilǎ graduated the Popular School of Arts (Şcoala Popularǎ de Arte) and started participating to many important festivals and group exhibitions and managing to have his own individual exhibition in Braşov in the mid '80s.

[edit] Prolific period in Vaslui

Vasile Hutopilǎ moved to Vaslui in 1986 with his wife and that was the beginning of the most important and prolific period of his career, at least until now. He was a member of the artistic circle Artaand won a lot of experience in his 9 years of staying in Vaslui, gathering more participations at exhibitions and festivals than in all the other periods together. He now meets lots of fine artists, especially from Vaslui, Iaşi and Chişinău, and also the Albanian painter Perikli Çuli, from Tirana.

[edit] Câmpulung Moldovenesc

Even if the most important period by cultural activities for Vasile Hutopilǎ was the time he lived in Vaslui, his best works, by far, are the ones made after 1995, in Câmpulung Moldovenesc, picturesque town in the Romanian side of Bukovina. In the middle of this heavenly spot of the Carpathians it wasn't hard to find inspiration. His nowadays paintings bring you to another dimension, a dimension of mountain country side, where peace, pure love and communion with nature reign.

[edit] Awards

Vasile Hutopila - Winter / oil on canvas, 2000
Vasile Hutopila - Winter / oil on canvas, 2000
  • 1983 - 3rd place at Cântarea României festival - the county final
  • May 20, 1985 - 1st place at the Participation, development, peace art festival in Braşov, awarded by the Committee of Socialist Education and Culture of Braşov County
  • 1985 - 2nd place at Cântarea României festival - the county final
  • 1985 - 2nd place at the most important Romanian arts festival under the communist rule, Cântarea României, in the national final, representing Braşov County
  • 1987 - 2nd place in the national final of Cântarea României festival, representing Vaslui County
  • 1987 - participation diploma at the Graphic Virtues of the Romanian Landscape national painting exhibition in Constanţa
  • 1988 - participation diploma at the Graphic Virtues of the Romanian Landscape national painting exhibition in Constanţa
  • 1989 - participation diploma at the Artur Verona national festival, Dorohoi, Botoşani County
  • In May 1997, at the 4th edition of The Bukovinian International Salon of Photography it was awarded the Vasile Hutopilǎ Special Award to one of the competitors, as a sign of gratitude to the Bukovinian Hutsul painter.
  • May 7, 2002 - 1st place at The Holy Easter in Bukovina festival, for Byzantine icons, in Câmpulung Moldovenesc, South Bukovina, awarded by the Town Hall
  • December 2002 - participation diploma at the exhibition in honour of Câmpulung Moldovenesc being named health resort of national interest, awarded by the Town Hall

[edit] Exhibitions

Some of Vasile Hutopilǎ's exhibitions, from his debut exhibition, in 1975, to the most recent one, in 2003, as part of the important folklore festival Întâlniri bucovinene, which takes part each year in Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Hungary and Germany, reuniting the Polish, Hungarians, Germans, Romanians, Ukrainians, Slovaks, Czechs, Croatians, Russians, who left from Bukovina and the ones who still live in Bukovina.

Vasile Hutopila - Winter in Bukovina / oil on cardboard, 2000
Vasile Hutopila - Winter in Bukovina / oil on cardboard, 2000

[edit] What art critics say

  • Vasile Hutopilǎ's paintings are a serene representation, a victory of the aesthetic truth, equivalent to the humanist love of the universe. Trembling of chromatic intensities, sensitively reduced in tonalities of grey colour in a trajectory of spirituality, of contemporary art. (Ion Vulcan, Bucharest 1987)
  • Vasile Hutopilǎ is an abstemious who tends unto the chromatic asceticism and the essence of the purified structures. Situated at the junction between sketch and watercolour, his art is organically unitary and it has an attentively watched colour distribution. (Aurel Leon, Cronica, Iaşi 21 July 1989, after one of the rare watercolour exhibitions of Hutopilǎ, who usually uses oil on canvas technique)

[edit] Works in media and books

Graphics and cartoons in journals and magazines:

Graphics in books:

  • George Ungureanu, Pǎţania lui Pişpiricǎ, Braşov, 2003
  • Alexandru Bogza, Antinomii tonale, Biblioteca Mioriţa, Câmpulung Moldovenesc, 2006
  • Decebal Alexandru Seul, Muntele din umbrǎ, Bacǎu, 2008

[edit] Mass Media

You can see below some of the newspapers, magazines, TV channels and radio stations to which Vasile Hutopilǎ gave interviews, from the early '80s till present

Vasile Hutopila - Adam and Eve / oil on cardboard, 2000
Vasile Hutopila - Adam and Eve / oil on cardboard, 2000

[edit] Countries in which there are paintings of Vasile Hutopilă in private collections

  • France
  • Germany
  • Greece
  • Hungary
  • Israel
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Netherlands
  • Norway
  • Palestina
  • Romania
  • Spain
  • Switzerland
  • United Arab Emirates
  • United States of America

[edit] External links

[edit] See also