The Animal Painting

My ghastly social-realist paintings are closely connected with the communist era that continues to leave its mark on Romanian society. For many people and institutions, this vicious ideology is still shimmering. This has led to a general reluctance to change. The shortage of food and goods dictated by the political leaders of the time, the hard work without any compensation and the constant fear brought out the worst in people. The older generation, who lived throughout the regime, became extremely selfish, greedy and mistrustful of other people. Liberal freedoms, freedom of (self/artistic) expression and privacy, was dangerous and nothing to boast about. People who showed such behaviour were often severely punished, because it was directly against the ruling party's ideology. Unfortunately, this spoiled mentality was handed down to younger generations. Romania is still in a slow process of recovering from this dark period in our history. Therefore, primary, consumerism, corruption, lack of personal and collective freedoms and the continuing communist hell after the regime are the common thread in my work. Moreover, as a correspondent of the omnipotence of reality, I consciously feel obliged to offer political and social criticism of the devastating post-communist influences and effects. Characterized by stark chromatic schemes and an overwhelming atmosphere, my works, through visual allegories of real problems and human suffering, transport the viewer to the way I experience Romania. Through his universal symbolic language, Tonita is not only able to convey an accessible message figuratively, but also to literally confront the viewer with the horror that everyone experiences but also which no one talks about. Since the economic situation of the country was hardly democratised, I quickly learned that poverty is part of the lives of many people. Due to the disorganised education system, people are unable to develop. As a result, many young adults are forced to abandon dreams and, out of desperate need, take up jobs with considerably low salaries. But this battle, people who try to make ends meet, turned out to be a "survival of the fittest" namely an endless source of greed and jealousy among the poor. Although misery is a stubborn characteristic of any modern society, this struggle in Romania is given an extra symbolic charge. Thus, the animal instinct, the desire to provide only for the most elementary needs, is a recurring motif in my work.