Rudolf Schweitzer - Cumpăna studied visual arts in Munich with the great masters of German painting. Back in Romania, he quickly became famous, starting to participate in all major national exhibitions from 1920 to 1971. On the occasion of his 70th birthday, the Romanian National Art Museum organised a retrospective exhibition at the Dalles Hall.

Rudolf Schweitzer-Cumpăna’s works were well-known in the Romanian art scene for the strength of the warm colours he used. He was a painter who not only had a significant artistic and creative side, but also a particularly comprehensive human side. He outlines his characters using colourful brush strokes, creating stunning effects with a single touch in which he captures colours that underline the dramatic effect of the composition.

Schweitzer-Cumpăna painted throughout his whole life, focusing on the peasants who abandon their burdens of hard days’ work, night after night, at the village bar. He studied this habit carefully, almost sociologically, and left us a vast collection of works full of drama, humanity, anchored in a social reality still present today.