George Matei Cantacuzino

George Matei Cantacuzino (–November 1, 1960) was a Romanian architect, painter and essayist.

Biography

Origins and early career

A scion of two noble families, Cantacuzino and Bibescu, he was born in Vienna to Nicolae B. Cantacuzino and his wife Marcela Bibescu, the granddaughter of Gheorghe Bibescu. His father had arrived in the Austrian capital in 1895 to work at the Romanian embassy. The family lived there until 1909, when the elder Cantacuzino was recalled and briefly named a general secretary within the Foreign Ministry. As an adolescent, he attended high school at Montreux and Lausanne in Switzerland, spending his vacations in Romania, especially in the Moldavia region. He took his graduating examination at Saint Sava National College in the national capital Bucharest in 1916. He volunteered for service in World War I from 1917 to 1918, becoming the youngest second lieutenant in the Romanian Land Forces and taking part in military operations in the Carpathians. Demobilized at Iași after the end of hostilities, he rambled across Moldavia with his friend Horia Teodoru; the two recorded their impressions in a series of drawings that was soon the subject of an exhibition. In 1919, the friends left by ship for Marseilles and then went to Paris, where Cantacuzino met his father (still in the diplomatic service) after an absence of several years due to the war. In the French capital, they were joined by three other Romanians, including linguist Alexandru Rosetti; all became his lifelong friends. This nucleus was later joined by Ion Jalea, Horia Creangă, Catul Bogdan and Gheorghe I. Brătianu.

In July 1919, Cantacuzino was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts, The same year, he began restoration work on Mogoșoaia Palace, he published articles on Baghdad, Shiraz, the desert and the waters of the Tigris here. These were subsequently included in the 1938 Pătrar de veghe, reviewed by Sebastian and George Călinescu. but this did not include Scrisorile către Simon, which were only published in 1993, after the Romanian Revolution. This work comprises thirteen letters written between May 1955 and the winter of 1959, addressed to his friend Simon Bayer. The first seven, from 1955-1956, appear autobiographical in intent: the author alludes to their joint experiences as young men and their supreme self-confidence. The tone of the later ones, composed from 1957 onward, shifts. While autobiography is not completely abandoned, the focus is far more philosophical, featuring reflections on questions that had troubled the author throughout his life. The architecture section of the Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iași, which became a faculty in 2003, was named after Cantacuzino in 1992. Ion Mihai Cantacuzino, a distant relative, published a biography in French in 2011; this appeared in Romanian translation the following year as O viață în România. De la "Belle Epoque" la Republica Populară , 1899-1960.