The Peleș National Museum will open the temporary exhibition on Tuesday, September 3, 2024
with the title, "Carmen Sylva-Dora Hitz, word and image / Carmen Sylva – Dora Hitz,
word and image”, which explores the remarkable artistic collaboration between the writer and
artist Carmen Sylva (1843-1916) and German painter Dora Hitz (1853-1924).
The exhibition commemorates 100 years since the death of Dora Hitz, whose artistic success was
facilitated by the first years spent as a painter of the Royal Court of Romania, under the patronage of
Queen Elizabeth, known under the pseudonym Carmen Sylva.
Painter Dora Hitz enjoyed considerable professional success as an artist
independent. He participated in the activity of avant-garde circles in Paris, Dresden and
Berlin and was appreciated at the time for her exploration of impressionist visual languages,
symbolist and expressionist. Her work was favorably reviewed in European periodicals
influential, sold by art dealers such as Paul Cassirer and Fritz Gurlitt, and presented in
exhibitions in Germany, Italy, France, Great Britain, Romania and the United States. Dora
Hitz also played an important role in the campaign for women's rights.
artistic education: she founded her own art school for women in Berlin in 1893, was
first president of the Frauenkunstverband in 1913 and managed to convince the Academy of Arts
Berlin beauties allowed women to register starting in 1919.
It seems that Dora Hitz's first meeting with Carmen Sylva took place in 1876, at
exhibition Allgemeine Kunst-und Kunstindustrie Ausstellung in Munich, when the queen,
captivated by one of the young artist's works, he invited her to the Royal Court of Romania.
The impetuosity of this proposal to a still unknown painter proves
the queen's personality and also demonstrates her deep confidence in the artistic abilities of
women in an era when female talent was often downplayed. Dora Hitz seems to have
came to Bucharest in 1878, after the War of Independence, and stayed until 1882,
then returning in 1886–1887. He continued to work with Carmen Sylva at least
until 1890. In 1913, the artist wrote: "I consider the great chance of my life to have been the fact
that I was able to live as a young woman in the land of Queen Carmen Sylva, enjoying
her special protection.",
Her paintings gave visual form to the queen's literary creations, most impressively
crystallization being the series of thirteen paintings for Peleș Castle, most of which are part of
interior decoration of the old Music Hall. Four other valuable works, originally located at
Sinaia, were restored and loaned to the Peleș National Museum by the Museum
National Museum of Art of Romania, of whose heritage they are part.
The event, placed under the auspices of the Royal Family of Romania, is initiated by:
Dr, Shona Kallestrup, University of St Andrews, and Dr Natalie Gutgesell, Association of
art Kunstverein Coburg, and will be continued with an international colloquium entitled Carmen
Sylva, Dora Hitz and the female artistic networks in Romania and Germany.
Institutional partners of the Peleș National Museum in organizing
this approach are: the National Museum of Art of Romania, the Goethe Institute,
Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bucharest, Embassy of Romania in
Berlin and the Consulate General of Romania in Munich.
