Carmen Sylva și Dora Hitz: cuvânt și imagine.

The School of Art History is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Carmen Sylva și Dora Hitz: cuvânt și imagine / Carmen Sylva and Dora Hitz: Word and Image on 3 September 2024. It runs until 15 February 2025.

Curated by Dr Shona Kallestrup (University of St Andrews) together with Dr Natalie Gutgesell (Kunstverein Coburg) and Peleș National Museum, the exhibition explores the artistic collaboration of the Neuwied-born writer Carmen Sylva (Queen Elisabeth of Romania, 1843–1916) and the Franconian painter Dora Hitz (1853–1924). It is organised under the auspices of the Royal Family of Romania and is supported by the National Museum of Art of Romania, the Goethe-Institute Romania, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bucharest, the Embassy of Romania in Berlin and the Consulate General of Romania in Munich.

Dora Hitz was a successful professional artist who participated in avant-garde networks in Paris, Dresden and Berlin. She won critical recognition for her exploration of Impressionist, Symbolist and Expressionist visual languages, as well as for her efforts to improve women’s access to art education. Yet she has – until recently – been largely overlooked by art history. In particular, her important early collaboration with the writer Carmen Sylva between 1878 and 1890 has been almost entirely ignored. Hitz’s omission from Romanian art history after the Second World War was political: as well as being a woman, she was German and she worked for the royal family. When a team of art historians was instructed by the socialist regime to inventory the royal collections after the exile of King Mihai I in 1948, it catalogued all Hitz’s works as “PFV”: pictură fără valoare (painting of no value), a classifier they still bear today.

This is the first of two related exhibitions organised by Dr Kallestrup and Dr Gutgesell to celebrate the centenary of Hitz’s death and demonstrate that Hitz’s work was far from being “painting of no value”. The ten paintings remaining in Peleș today are joined by others recently rediscovered in the storerooms of the National Museum of Art in Bucharest and now beautifully restored. The second exhibition, Dora Hitz – Aus Franken nach Rumänien in die Welt, will open in Kunstverein Coburg on 24 January and run until 11 May 2025.

The vernissage of the Peleș exhibition on 3 September is followed by an international colloquium: Carmen Sylva, Dora Hitz and Women’s Art Networks in Romania and Germany, whose programme can be viewed here [Colloquium Programe (PDF)]. A virtual museum of Hitz’s paintings in the Old Music Room in Peleș, developed by Open Virtual Worlds and supported by the University’s Impact & Innovation Fund, will be launched at the event.