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Paciurea, Dimitrie
(b Bucharest, 23 Nov 1873; d Bucharest, 14 July 1932). Romanian sculptor. He graduated in 1894 from the School of Arts and Crafts in Bucharest, and in 1895 he went to Paris with a scholarship awarded by the Romanian government. There he followed courses at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where his teacher was Antoine Injalbert. His greatest influence, however, was Rodin: his bronze heads of children from this time show an almost Impressionist manner, unlike his early, more academic, marble portrait busts. Paciurea returned to Bucharest in 1900 and began to attempt a synthesis of his newly acquired, freer handling with traditional craftmanship and a romantic, heroic vision. His monumental Giant (h. 6 m, 1906; version, Bucharest, Carol Park) is generally regarded as his finest work of this period. He also created a number of portrait busts of writers and artists at this time such as Stefan Luchian (1910; Cluj-Napoca, Cioflec Mus.) as well as allegorical low-reliefs and monumental works such as Madona Stolojan (plaster relief, 860*236 mm, 1912), the God of War (bronze, h. 915 mm) and Sphinx (plaster, h. 1.17 m, 1912; all Bucharest, N. Mus. A.). In 1909 he was appointed professor at the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest, and in 1910 he shared second prize at the official Salon with Brancusi. In the 1920s he began the exploration of a more modern and subjective sculptural language: the Chimeras he created in his last years, such as Chimera of the Earth (bronze, h. 525 mm, 1927–8) and Chimera of the Air (plaster, h. 164 mm, 1927; both Bucharest, N. Mus. A.), are projections of a troubled subconscious, in which fictional and poetical elements meet with passional and stylized ways of modelling. During his last years he took part in a number of international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale of 1924 and the Exposició Internacional in Barcelona in 1929, where he won the bronze medal.
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