The compartment "Sculpture" is inaugurated by the works of the founder of the national school of Bessarabian sculpture, the famous sculptor from Chisinau Alexandru Plamadeala. His sketch of the first variant of Stephan cel Mare's monument made in 1924 cronologically "opens" the "virtual Gallery".
Claudia Cobizev and Lazar Dubinovschi are from the generation of artists who were formed in the inter-war period. Claudia Cobizev, pupil of A. Plamadeala, excelled in a remarkable way in the sphere of portrait and relief. Her work "The Moldavian Girl's Head" became an anthological "work" of the Bessarabian sculpture from the postwar years.
Lazar Dubinovschi studied art in Bucharest and worked for a period of time in the workshop of the famous remarkable French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle. After World War II he becomes one of the most important monumentalist sculptors from the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) paying completely his contribution to the art "employed" for the so-called "socialist realism". In his easel works, however, where the social factors and the commander's influence were less minor, his born talent and his well inter-war preparation permitted the artist to create works of authentic value. His composition "Stramba Lemne" and Andrei Lupan's and Ghenadi Solominov's portraits are works that denote the sculptor's remarkable craftsmanship.
Alexandra Picunov belongs to the generation of sculptors that had been already formed with a special feeling of the monumental form and with an authentic decorative spirit A.Picunov managed to synthesize them into an unmistakable symbiosis with doubtless philosophical connotations.
Galina Dubrovin, a graduate of the Fine Arts State Institute from Lvov, is known especially due to metropolitan bishop's monument of Petru Movila from Chisinau. Her "easel" more intimate chamber works both conceptual and materialistic were selected for the virtual gallery.
Valeriu Rotari's premature death didn't allow his talent to be manifested plenarily. But we must not forget that his works from the middle of 80-es played a decisive role in the "outlining" of the "face" of our modern sculpture and in its liberation from the "stereotypes of the idealized esthetics".
Tudor Cataraga, Ion Zderciuc and Valentin Vartosu are three sculptors that had appeared in the second half of the 80-es and that continue to activate successfully up till now. Each of them elaborated his private plastic image. Thus, if in some works of the type "To the illuminated Cactus" Valentin Vartosu is ironical, then Tudor Cataraga in "Archeology" is "retrospective", but Ion Zderciuc in "Eminescu-Luceafar" is romantic and spontaneous.
Mircea Puscas, belongs to the last generation of the Bessarabian sculptors who had been spoken about in the 90-es of the last century.
Being both a supporter of the traditional sculpture and of the alternative art in his creations, Mircea Puscas uses a voluntarily hermetic vocabulary, his descriptive process of work becoming a component part of the esthetic delight reserved for the spectator.
Alexandru Plamadeala
