Dumitru Gorzo

Dumitru Gorzo.

As I was reading about him my memories were carrying me back in time... Dumitru Gorzo, an artist born in Ieud, on the valley of the Iza river… long time ago I had made a journey on the valley of the Iza river, to see there the wooden churches and the icons on glass. The wooden church of Ieud was known as the cathedral – it was the largest, but, beside its size, there was something else, a kind of natural greatness – as I was walking through the church I was thinking that the first princes of Moldavia had come from Ieud.

Maramures, tara veche,
Cu oameni fara pereche

I had come there to see the wooden churches and the icons on glass and I was discovering a whole civilization – the country of deep woods and of fantastic woodcraft – the wooden churches, the wooden gates… the motifs carved on the gates were carrying a whole mythology – and I realized that my journey there was a rite of initiation - something essential was there, told by the figures carved on the gates – some profound sizes of the Romanian ethos.

And Dumitru Gorzo comes from there, from the valley of the Iza river – his works are from the universe of the motifs carved on the wooden gates there, in Ieud – beyond the iconoclasm, the unconventional, the provocative, his works carry the same story, the same fundamental myths of the Romanian ethos.