# Painter Ștefan Potop’s “Autoportret” exhibition

> From 1–15 March 2012, the Lascăr Vorel Galleries in Piatra Neamț will host painter Ștefan Potop’s “Autoportret” exhibition.

2012-03-15, Events

From 1–15 March 2012, the Lascăr Vorel Galleries in Piatra Neamț will host painter Ștefan Potop’s “Autoportret” exhibition. The exhibition will open on Thursday, 1 March, at 17:00 before a large audience, with an introduction by writer and art critic Lucian Strochi.

The exhibition features 23 large paintings by the well-known painter Ștefan Potop, depicting self-portraits in various guises through an original artistic vision, most of them painted recently. The technique is familiar, each brushstroke carries weight and quickly takes physical form, and the painter’s assured execution is his unbeatable weapon.

The works exhibited on this occasion represent 35 years of the painter’s work. The artist has set his self-portraits in a Venetian landscape, without water or gondolas, alluding to the urban folklore of the city on the blue lagoon. These large paintings, with their substantial physical presence, astonish us with imagery that bridges the familiar face and the self-created portrait in multiple guises, some of them extremely intriguing.

In all 23 paintings, the model’s malleability is taken to extremes when the person the artist depicts is himself. Here you can see the limits of his thinking about himself, how the painter perceives himself and, above all, how he believes he wishes to be scrutinised by critics and viewed by admirers, laypeople or students. You can admire Potop as a doge, a gondolier, a bishop or a nude, covered only by his palette.

The exhibition highlights a motif that appears throughout the painter’s recent work: Veneția, with the symbols of the Serenissima Republic. In several of these works, the artist’s face is covered by a Venetian mask, with Potop playing the role of a schemer.

- [News](https://neamt.tesseramo.com/en/stiri/expozitia-autoportret-a-pictorului-stefan-potop)