Natalia Dumitresco Biography
Natalia Dumitresco (1915 - 1997), born in Bucharest, Romania in 1915, was a Franco-Romanian abstract painter associated with the Réalités Nouvelles salon in Paris after World War II, a movement influenced by the art of Wassily Kandinsky. Dumitresco graduated from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1939, the same year she and Alexandre Istrati married. From 1940 to 1947 he worked and exhibited in Romania. But in 1947, due to a scholarship, Dumitresco and her husband Istrati moved to Paris. They soon befriended the legendary sculptor Constantin Brancusi, himself a displaced Romanian. At his request, the couple moved into a studio next to his, at 11 Impasse Ronsin in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. They worked for Brancusi for nine years until his death in 1957. Istrati and Dumitresco were named legal executors of his will. Together with his wife, Istrati reorganized the “Brancusi studio” in the Center Pompidou in Paris, dedicated in 1977, as a museum wing. Both became naturalized French citizens in 1965. Dumitresco's painting style followed the movement of post-war trends that developed in the circle of the School of Paris. Starting in 1952, Dumitresco won numerous prestigious awards, including one from the Espace group in 1952, the Kandinsky Award in 1955, the Prix des Amateurs et Collectionneurs d'Art in 1957, and the Carnegie Prize in Pittsburgh in 1959.
