The family album
I was 4 when my grandfather held me in his arms. He was one of the last survivors of the generation that survived the Russian Revolution of 1917. His memory jumped the chasm between the present and the distant past. Only a few photographs and memories are what were left and they are the only proof of this walk through time.
The most important but also most mysterious personality of my family history was Auguste Baillayre – the painter, my mother’s side grandfather. His whole life had been an adventure and his work is far too little known today. He was born on 1879 in Béziers – a small town in Occitanie region of Southern France. He spent his childhood in France, the adolescence in Georgia, went to school in Amsterdam and St. Petersburg and became one of the most outstanding icons of the arts of that time in the Bassarabia of 1918-1940. He has spent the last years of his life in Bucharest. Baillayre’s work evolved through these three distinct stages coincided with his residence in Russia, in Bassarabia and in Bucharest and they reflected his interest in constructivism and postimpressionism. Towards the end of his tumultuous life, Auguste stated bitterly: “Far away from the beloved ones, a stranger among strangers. In Russia I was French, in Holland and France I was Russian, in Romania, French again. Ultimately, alienated from everything and everybody”.
Auguste Baillayre was not the only artist in his family. Lidia Arionescu whom he married in St. Petersburg chose the painterly values of neoimpressionism. His elder daughter, Tania Baillayre was painter. The youngest daughter, Marina – my mother, did not really paint but her husband, Octav Iliescu – my father, was sculptor and illustrator.
I am endlessly staring at these photos, each time trying to decipher the mystery of these people’s existence. I have done my best to disentangle history from myth, fact from fancy, but in the end I cannot be sure neither about the truth of what happened, neither about of what is recorded. Because Auguste, Octav, Tania and Marina managed to remember what they did and passed it on, I owe to them the conviction that my own life did not begin with my birth, but with theirs, a century ago, in a foreign place, and that when I will disappear, it is my duty to convey their memories further on.
The family album
I was 4 when my grandfather held me in his arms. He was one of the last survivors of the generation that survived the Russian Revolution of 1917. His memory jumped the chasm between the present and the distant past. Only a few photographs and memories are what were left and they are the only proof of this walk through time.
The most important but also most mysterious personality of my family history was Auguste Baillayre – the painter, my mother’s side grandfather. His whole life had been an adventure and his work is far too little known today. He was born on 1879 in Béziers – a small town in Occitanie region of Southern France. He spent his childhood in France, the adolescence in Georgia, went to school in Amsterdam and St. Petersburg and became one of the most outstanding icons of the arts of that time in the Bassarabia of 1918-1940. He has spent the last years of his life in Bucharest. Baillayre’s work evolved through these three distinct stages coincided with his residence in Russia, in Bassarabia and in Bucharest and they reflected his interest in constructivism and postimpressionism. Towards the end of his tumultuous life, Auguste stated bitterly: “Far away from the beloved ones, a stranger among strangers. In Russia I was French, in Holland and France I was Russian, in Romania, French again. Ultimately, alienated from everything and everybody”.
Auguste Baillayre was not the only artist in his family. Lidia Arionescu whom he married in St. Petersburg chose the painterly values of neoimpressionism. His elder daughter, Tania Baillayre was painter. The youngest daughter, Marina – my mother, did not really paint but her husband, Octav Iliescu – my father, was sculptor and illustrator.
I am endlessly staring at these photos, each time trying to decipher the mystery of these people’s existence. I have done my best to disentangle history from myth, fact from fancy, but in the end I cannot be sure neither about the truth of what happened, neither about of what is recorded. Because Auguste, Octav, Tania and Marina managed to remember what they did and passed it on, I owe to them the conviction that my own life did not begin with my birth, but with theirs, a century ago, in a foreign place, and that when I will disappear, it is my duty to convey their memories further on.
