Natalia DUMITRESCO - Abstract composition in red and black, original signed lithograph, 1962

Natalia Dumitresco : (1915-1997) was a French-Romanian abstract painter associated with the Réalités Nouvelles salon of Paris, a movement influenced by the art of Wassily Kandinsky and Alberto Magnelli. Other abstract expressionist painters of the movement include Serge Poliakoff and Alexandre Istrati, whom she married. She got her diploma from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1939, and worked until 1947 in Romania, and then moved to Paris, where they befriended the sculptor Constantin Brancusi. She worked for him until his death in 1957. She and her husband were named to manage his estate and together reorganized the Studio Brancusi at the Pompidou Centre, subsequently dedicated in 1977 as a wing of the museum. After a number of years working in black and white, she tackled the problem of colours, showing originality and a great freshness of colours in her compositions. Dumitresco won many prestigious awards: one from the group Espace in 1952, the 1955 Kandinsky Award, the 1957 Prix des Amateurs et Collectionneurs d'Art, and the Carnegie Prize in Pittsburgh in 1959.