art.wikisort.org - Artist

Stan Ioan Pătraş (1908–1977) was a Romanian wood sculptor, the creator of the tombstones in the Merry Cemetery in Săpânța, Maramureș County.

His creations fit harmoniously within the local popular arts and in the old Romanian tradition.

Biography

Stan Ioan Pătraş was born in 1908 in Săpânța commune, Maramureș County (then in Austria-Hungary) in a family that had a long tradition in wood sculpting. Even from his youth he was attracted to sculpture, painting and poetry and at the age of 14 he started to sculpt oak crosses.

In 1935 Stan Ioan Pătraş, then an anonymous sculptor, started to carve onto the tombstones small poems written in the first person: ironic poems, with grammatical errors very close to the archaic language the locals spoke. At the beginning he carved only 10 tombstones a year using oak as the base wood.

By 1936 he had already perfected his style: the tombstones became narrower, he started to paint relief figures on them using bright colours obtained from natural pigments. The main colour he used was blue, a special blue named by experts Săpânţa blue. The other colours were also symbolic in their unique way: Green - life, Yellow - fertility, Red - passion, Black - death.

Until 1977, Pătraş made almost 700 tombstones in the two graveyards in Săpânța, later known as the Merry Cemetery.

He died in 1977, leaving his house to a disciple, Dumitru Pop, who chose to live in his master's house, and later turned it into a workshop and a museum.

External links

• www.adevarul.ro (in Romanian)

На других языках

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[de] Stan Ioan Pătraș

Stan Ioan Pătraș (* 1908 in Săpânța (Rumänien); † 1977 ebenda) war ein rumänischer Künstler. Über Jahrzehnte gestaltete er den Friedhof in der Gemeinde Săpânța im Kreis Maramureș im nördlichen Rumänien in besonderer Weise, so dass dieser jetzt als "Fröhlicher Friedhof" (rumänisch: Cimitirul Vesel) weit über Rumänien hinaus bekannt ist und Touristen anzieht: Die traditionellen hölzernen Grabstelen verzierte Patras mit handgemalten Bildern der Verstorbenen und mit Versen zu ihrem Leben.

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- [en] Stan Ioan Pătraș

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[fr] Stan Ioan Pătraș

Stan Ioan Pătraș (né en 1908 à Săpânța, aujourd'hui dans le județ de Maramureș en Roumanie, à l'époque en Autriche-Hongrie, et mort en 1977 dans la même ville) est un sculpteur sur bois roumain, connu pour être le créateur des croix en bois peintes du cimetière joyeux de Săpânța[2],[3],[4].

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