The painter Stefan Caltia declared on Tuesday, at the launch by Romfilatelia of a philatelic issue dedicated to his art, that the blue found in his works represents the cleanliness, beauty and sky that the artist brings to the village world, inviting for their preservation in the souls of each of us.

“I was glad as a child that I would be on the stamps and I thought why wouldn’t my mother and father and the village priest and my childhood world see that Stefan son of Aurel is on the stamps. A natural joy. Then, of course, you have to think about how important this is, that you are entering a different way of circulating in the world. I feel good,” he said.

Speaking about the blue of the peasant houses, which can be found in his works, presented in the philatelic issue, Caltia said that this color is chosen by the peasants.

“And there’s a very scholarly discussion, sometimes or dilettante at other times, as to why houses are blue. Some argue that in medieval times peasants were forced to make their houses blue. The reality is very simple: blue and white, in the amount of green, have an extraordinary preciousness and brightness. The house becomes like a jewel. (…) It is the cleanliness, it is the beauty, it is the heaven that the peasant brings there, with him. This is how the houses used to be. Mind you, all over Wallachia are blue houses. And we also find them in Basarabia. It’s a story of understanding colour in nature that the man we like to call simple, but he wasn’t simple, but a wise man, used,” the artist said.

“The house in my paintings from the ’70s is from when houses were demolished, churches were demolished, a natural thing happened for the communist world, an erasure from people’s minds and souls of everything that belonged to their soul and mind. And then I took the blue house and placed it on a tray like the Holy Gifts and wrapped it in a glass globe and painted it. I let the blue colour go into people’s homes thinking that we could carry our beautiful things with us. And as proof that the time has come and we can now go back and, as the peasants from my village say, scrape the paint on the house and see that it is blue behind. And to bring blue into our souls with the priest, with the teacher, with the children and to enjoy the place where we live and where we will go,” Stefan Caltia said.

The issue of postal trademarks “Contemporary Romanian artists. Stefan Caltia”, which brings to the attention of collectors and lovers of beauty the creation of one of the most important painters of the moment, was launched on Tuesday, by Romfilatelia, at the headquarters in Bucharest.

Stefan Caltia’s works evoke the charm of the worldly order of things. The beauty of the blue that the painter sees on the hills of childhood also transpires in his works. The parents’ house, as well as other architectural monuments erected in Sona, become a major motif in Caltia’s painting.

“The blue household annex, a painting reproduced on the stamp with the face value of RON 3.50, occupies a special place in the Casa albastra de la Sona/Blue House from Sona, Fagaras, while the work Cer alb/White Sky (2016)” is reproduced on the postmark with the face value of RON 35 from the souvenir sheet of the issue. At the same time, in the souvenir sheet of the issue is shown the self-portrait of the painter Stefan Caltia.

The work Cantaretul si casa albastra/The Singer and the Blue House (2014) is illustrated on the postmark with the face value of RON 1.60, and the painting Amintiri cu luna/Memories with the Moon (2014) is shown on the postmark with the face value of RON 24.