A major exhibition dedicated to the painter Ștefan Câlția will open on June 19 as part of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival (FITS). Titled Transylvania | Extravaganza, the exhibition brings together approximately 80 works from the archive of the Ștefan Câlția Foundation as well as from private collections, and takes place in the former pedagogical school of the Ursuline Monastery in Sibiu.
Organized at the invitation of FITS and in partnership with the Brukenthal National Museum, the exhibition is curated by the critic Liviana Dan and represents a landmark cultural event for Romania and Central Europe. Conceived as a layered journey through the work of one of the most important contemporary artists, it brings together emblematic works, visual narratives, and interdisciplinary collaborations.
The exhibition title — Transylvania | Extravaganza — refers to Ștefan Câlția’s poetic and symbolic universe, in which characters, animals, and landscapes become witnesses to a fragile relationship between humans and nature. The curatorial concept proposed by Liviana Dan offers a clear and coherent path, translated into exhibition design by architect Eliza Yokina. From the edge of the forest and the village, with their specific elements and constructions, from plants and animals to the world of theatre and the spiritual dimension, the themes within the artist’s universe unfold as distinct stories and ecosystems throughout the spaces of the Ursuline Monastery. At once autonomous and interconnected, all these dimensions naturally follow one another, overlap, and mutually construct each other, forming a unified trajectory. Within this conceptual framework — both intuitive and tactile — formulated by curator Liviana Dan, Câlția appears either as the “guardian of Transylvania” or the “pedestrian of the skies.”
“I would like every person who comes to the exhibition to leave with their thoughts rearranged, with the feeling that something has unsettled them and made them feel intensely alive. You go there, you look, and you feel that your thoughts, your joys, your tensions and dramas are alive, and that somehow you would want to put them in order. And then, because it will be quite a large exhibition, I would also like it to awaken an appetite for work in your life, for your profession. To leave feeling that you must do something.” — Ștefan Câlția
“For Ștefan Câlția, Transylvania is a spiritual urgency. Influential and innovative, with a Central European sensibility, Ștefan Câlția regards painting as a gift to humanity. What painting means today is not merely an ethical observation, but a dimension aligned with real life. Approached intellectually, the structures of painting are rewritten with every gaze. Interpreted poetically, they become a refuge for the imagination. What does his painting mean within the spectacle of the image? In Câlția’s work there is a tender way of creating an image. There is a simple, integrative elegance; there are fairy tales, pure drawing, magical serenity, a school of colour, instantaneous and aggressive aesthetic politics, truth and fiction, a half-fantastic reality; and there is a force that organizes them all. He reinvents the past and imagines its ideals. He brings the past from the abstract world into the concrete one. Then, within the concrete world, style manages the mysterious atmosphere connected to history. Suspended and glittering juxtapositions. All that remains for us is to look at painting as he encourages us to do. To imagine what is happening. Or what is not happening.” — Liviana Dan, curator of the exhibition Transylvania | Extravaganza.
The exhibition is organized by the Ștefan Câlția Foundation, Galeria Posibilă, and the Artep Gallery Association, in partnership with the Brukenthal National Museum and the Sibiu International Theatre Festival, whose edition this year is organized under the theme “Soul.” Curator: Liviana Dan Romania
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