Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck

Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck (14 March 1879, in Câineni, Vâlcea – 29 October 1969, in Bucharest) was a Romanian painter with a strong influence on cultural life in the interwar period.

She was a promoter of feminism, contributing to the establishment of the "Association of women painters and sculptors" (together with Olga Greceanu and Nina Arbore) and "Feminin artistic circle".

She, however, remained very close to her parents, Natalia and Ion Brăneanu, and her sisters, Fulvia (who died in her teens) and Ortansa (who became an important feminist activist in Romania).

Her public debut was at the 1902 Salon du Champs de Mars, where she displayed an oil painting simply entitled Nude Study, now in the collection of the National Museum of Art of Romania.

The two panels are separated by a stone fountain sculpted by her husband Frederic, modeled on the door of Colțea Church, which is located near the University of Bucharest.

In 1948, under the new Communist regime, the works of Frederic Storck were declared to be "of public utility", and in 1951 the studio was opened as an art museum, with the family preserving living space elsewhere in the house.

The first of this was a mural Agriculture, Industry and Commerce (1916) for the hall of honor of the Marmorosch, Blank & Co. Bank [ro] building in Strada Doamnei, Bucharest, designed by architect Petre Antonescu.

Her later Istoria Negoțului Românesc ("History of Romanian Trade", 1933) in the hall of the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies was a massive mural, exceeding 100 square metres (1,100 sq ft), and showing over 100 distinct life-sized individuals.

In 1937 she was invited to participate in the decoration of the Romanian pavilion of the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris, contributing a composition depicting 16th-century Wallachian voivode Petru Cercel and his court.

As Petru Comarnescu put it, although "their faces are troubled by anxiety, trials, suffering, suggesting to us these states of mind, the Gypsies' bodies seem like the fruits and flowers that are, not by chance, found around them.

In June 2010, from the initiative of the rector of the Economic Studies Academy of Bucharest, Gheorghe Roșca, and of the mayor of Câineni, Ion Nicolae, a commemorative plaque was placed in the village Râul Vadului.

Cuțescu-Storck made her artistic debut in Paris in 1902, presenting this nude study in oils at the Salon du Champs de Mars .
A portion of one of Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck's murals for Casa Storck
Maternitate , 1911
Portrait sculpture by her husband, Frederic (1909). From the collection of the "Frederic and Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck Art Museum"