Pavlin Nazarie

Pavlin Nazarie was born in Bessarabia, today’s Moldova, but lived from his childhood in București, where he first attended a special school for cartography. He then worked as a cartographer at the Military Geographical Institute until 1946, and simultaneously started his activity in fine arts.

Before World War II, Nazarie designed advertisements for American and German film companies who showed their movies in București. Later he co-founded the Association of Romanian Painters and Sculptors, where he described himself as “self-taught”.

After the war, Nazarie put his works into the service of Socialist Realism, painting mainly children, peasants, and workers. He participated in dozens of exhibitions with posters, book covers and illustrations, as well as paintings and drawings. In 1958, he was expelled from the Communist Party and the Artists’ Association for allegedly attending a meeting of the right-wing nationalist Legionnaires.

Nazarie stuck to his realistic, figurative style in the time of the Romanian Kingdom as well as in the socialist system. His gouache First in sports, first in studies may refer to the depiction of Young Pioneers. For this organization, he also designed a series of stamps in 1952.