Anatol Vulpe (1907 - 1946) - Citadin

Anatol Vulpe distinguished himself especially as a painter of urban views, landscapes, static natures, portraits and nudes of women. His work is still known in fragments, but given the presence of his works on the art market in recent years, we can see that he left interesting pieces with a rich and expressive color. The concealment of the biography and work of this gifted painter-bohemian is largely due to his tragic end, which occurred on the night of April 5 to 6, 1946, when Anatol Vulpe was shot with 15 bullets, of different calibers. At the same time, his girlfriend, Elena Bogdan, was found 800 m away, also shot, in Moșoiu Park in Bucharest.

The tragic event was largely reconstructed by the historian Mihai Pelin, and this Case Study it is essentially due to the return of Vulpe's work to the attention of specialists and art collectors. Pelin's book The Decade of Collapses (1940-1950): the lives of Romanian painters, sculptors and architects between legionaries and Stalinists (Compania publishing house, Bucharest, 2005), and especially the study The assassination of the painter Anatol Vulpe, is essential for the re-evaluation of that era.

Pelin believes that Vulpe was assassinated for political reasons by the Soviets due to a malicious rumor that Vulpe was a descendant of Romanov, which Pelin considers false based on the painter's birth certificate.