The restoration of the
\nBrancoveanu Palace in Mogosoaia, north of Bucharest and the designs for the
\nChrisovelloni Bank Palace in the centre of Bucharest, the Rex Hotel in Mamaia
\nresort on the Black Sea Coast and the Spa Facility in the resort of
\nOlanesti,in Valcea County, southern
\nRomania – are all the work of architect George Matei Cantacuzino. During his
\nshort life, this resourceful architect designed buildings, held classes on
\narchitecture and wrote books, trying to provide a theoretical background to his
\nstyle, which is a mix of classical, traditional and modernist architecture. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
A descendant of two
\nRomanian noble families, Cantacuzino and Bibescu, George Matei Cantacuzino was
\nborn in 1899 in Vienna, where his father worked at the Romanian Embassy. Some
\nof his ancestors were ruling princes and statesmen who contributed to the
\nsocial and cultural development of the Romanian Principalities from the Middle
\nAges to the modern period. In 1919, George Matei Cantacuzino was admitted to
\nthe Fine Arts School in Paris. That same year, he began restoration work on the
\nMogosoaia Palace, the 18th century residence of ruler Constantin
\nBrancoveanu that became the property of the architect’s aunt, Princess Martha
\nBibescu, in the early 20th century. In 1923, George Matei
\nCantacuzino and architect August Schmiedigen designed the Chrisovelloni Bank
\nPalace, inaugurated in 1928. His career took off, but then something happened.
\nIn 1940, a building he had designed, the Carlton apartment block, collapsed
\nduring an earthquake. The authorities blamed both the builders and the
\narchitect. After an inquiry, it was established that the causes that triggered
\nthe collapse of the building had nothing to do with the architect and George
\nMatei Cantacuzino no longer faced criminal charges. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
After World War II and
\nfollowing the installation of communism in Romania, misfortune struck again.
\nThis period was explored by Vlad Mitric-Ciupe in a book called The Architect
\nG.M. Cantacuzino in the Securitate Files published by Vremea. We caught with
\nthe author of the book and asked him what happened to Cantacuzino after 1944:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
In a moment of
\ninspiration, in the late 1930s, he sent his wife and two children abroad.
\nShortly after the war, he tried to join them. The documents in this book,
\narranged in a chronological order, reveal Cantauzino’s attempts to leave the
\ncountry and the obstacles raised by the State Security and then by the
\ncommunist Securitate, which tried to prevent him from obtaining a passport and
\nthen from getting a visa. This is why he then tried to flee Romania illegally,
\nbecause he couldn’t leave it otherwise. There’s an interesting episode, when he tried to flee the country by boat, from
\nConstanta. At the same time, right from 1945-1946, he was involved in the
\nattempts to create an anti-communist resistance. The architect’s house was used
\nfor secret meetings between the man who led the armed wing of the national
\nresistance movement, colonel Ioan Toba, and representatives of foreign legations,
\nespecially British and American officers. He was found out and received a long
\nand tough sentence, not for trying to cross the border illegally but for
\nbelonging to a banned organisation, and was sent to work on the Canal.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The
\nCanal in question, which was being built at the time, was meant to link the
\nDanube to the Black Sea via the southern part of Constanta and is where many
\npolitical convicts died from hard labour during the communist regime. Arrested
\nin 1948, Cantacuzino was released from prison in 1953, his health being
\nseriously damaged. Vlad Mitric-Ciupe, who wrote a book about the architect
\nGeorge Matei Cantacuzino, tells us more about the architect’s condition after
\nhe was released from prison:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
With
\nthe help of the architect Stefan Bals, to whom he was in fact related,
\nCantacuzino managed, quite soon after his release, to find employment with the
\nCommission of Historical Monuments, but it didn’t take long for him to be given
\nthe sack. He ended up working for the Metropolitan Church in Moldavia, where he
\nalso found accommodation. In the four years he spent there, until his untimely
\ndeath in 1960, he was constantly watched by the Securitate. A network of
\ninformers permanently reported everything the architect said or did. He had not
\ngone through a re-education process in prison, and there are informers’ notes
\nmentioning Cantacuzino’s reactions to the events in Hungary in 1956. That’s
\nwhat made the Securitate tighten their surveillance on him, seeing how he was
\nopenly expressing support for the Hungarian revolution.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
George
\nMatei Cantacuzino died in 1960 in the north-eastern city of Iasi where he spent
\nhis latter years. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite his short career, G.M. Cantacuzino left behind some great architectural works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":168963,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45210],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-168962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rri-encyclopaedia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n