Egyptian cat (2017)

Exceeding the confines of a vast canvas through its spectacular assault of unrestrained expression and brilliant color, Egyptian Cat by Gheorghe Virtosu encapsulates the full force of artist’s abstract vernacular. The edges of the work, especially at the top and bottom, become significant activity, and this along with the drift, evokes the sensation of gravity and in the same time its absence.

The artist depicts not a cat, but a sacred symbol in which transcendental and secular aspects of existence are fused.

One can easily guess the feline silhouette in the combination of roundish and edged shapes colored in black. The colorful inlays in the abstract painting remind of the Egyptian statuettes decorated with precious and semi-precious stones, whilst the strokes of yellow are associated with the golden elements, which highlighted the smooth texture of the material.

Unlike in many of his other pieces, here Virtosu doesn’t attempt to ruin the illusion of the flat oil painting surface with the active vibrating background. On contrary, he highlights its two-dimensionality, making the canvas looks like a fragment of the wall: the stressed horizontal line under what we perceive as a cat, wide brushstrokes, blend of beige and gray (the colours of the limestone), evoke in our mind images of the walls of the Egyptian tombs and temples.

Egyptian art followed the principle of the engineering design: to show an object not from one point of view, but from the combination of different perspectives that makes it the most recognizable. The same way, Gheorghe Virtosu chooses the curled up pose - the essence of the cat’s character that represents causality, relaxedness, and grandiosity making room for subjective interpretations that is the wealth and the power of abstract painting.