Untitled - Lelia Rus Pirvan

(Constanta Art Museum/Ovidius University, Fine Arts Faculty. Constanta)

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For the city where I live, but also for the whole humanity, the poet Ovidius is the image of the exiled artist, a man who loved and suffered for his poems, being banished at the end of the Roman Empire, on the bank of the Pontus Euxinus. A man who endured the terrible freezing winds of ancient Tomis and craved for his native land, after home life, until he passed, unconsolated, in the year 17 AD. The location of his tomb is unknown, remaining a mystery of the city. In the absence of his grave, lovers of poetry and art come to pay tribute to the bronze statue located in the old center, in the square bearing the name of the poet. The statue is on a white marble base, on which a plate with some of the most beautiful poems of Antiquity "Tristele" is inlaid:

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"Under this stone lies Ovidiu,                                                                                                                             The singer of The Tender Loves, killed by his talent,                                                                                    Oh, you, walking passerby, if you've ever loved,                                                                                       Please pray for him: may him sleep soundly. "

In latin:

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Hic ego qui iaceo tenerorum lusor amorum                                                                                             Ingenio perii, Naso poeta meo.                                                                                                                             At tibi qui transis, ne sit grave quisquis amasti,                                                                                         Dicere: Nasonis molliter ossa cubent".

 

My work is a painting overlayed on a frotage made on the epitaph of Ovidius, after the marble. It is a tribute that I want to bring to all the artists who were misunderstood in their times. He is the symbol of someone who lost the idea of house and suffered for this alienation, but has found here, over the centuries, people whose souls vibrates at the beauty of his poems.