Poema Romana collection
There is no art without an artist, just as there is no artist without what inspired him to create. What tireless legacy does an idea plant deep in his soul? What madness causes him to follow it? And, perhaps the most important question of all, where are his roots?
Looking for an answer, we decided to get in the car and go back in time. The soul was guiding us, so we got exactly where we needed to be. We knocked on old doors and promised to listen to what they had to say. And they opened in front of us. They taught us that life is art and poetry and that "today" always becomes "yesterday". We were told not to forget to paint and, most importantly, to never stop dreaming.
This is how the Poema Romana collection was born, out of respect for our roots and out of love for beauty. We see the return to traditions as a well-deserved breath of fresh air and we felt called to rediscover them. To value and reinvent them. In this sense, as elements of inspiration, the collection unfolds as three syncretic directions, carefully woven into the fabric of our cultural heritage. Authentic and eternal folk creations, filled with secrets that have been inherited from one generation to another. We have created paintings and then wallpapers that allow the highest form of delicacy to shine through. We were also inspired by the borangic scarves embroidered with silk thread, created with so much care and skill by Romanian artisans. We admired and studied the belts, carpets and towels, embellished with unique, hand-woven patterns such as geometric and structured details, that stylize the natural elements.
The Poema Romana collection includes wallpapers that incorporate the story of the Tree of Life, a motif with a universal resonance, that can be found on fabrics, decorative objects or clothing in all European culture, as well as in Asia. In Romania, it can be found especially on the Oltenian and Moldavian carpets. The motif symbolizes the link between life and death, its crown representing the celestial plane, while the roots belong to the telluric. Because one of our wishes was to bring beauty and magic inside people's homes, we chose to bring praise to the popular painters who approached their works in the style of naive art. The explicit valences towards the magical realism and towards a frugal and primitive stylistic horizon, in communion with the traditional Romanian symbols, inspired us to create models such as the Amorul in Carpati or the Ornament Rasturnat. The inclusion of mythic and folk motifs (the flight, the dream, the harmony between man and nature), as well as a personal and exposed style, were the conceptual foundation behind this direction.
We stopped in Bucovina, Gura Humorului and Campulung Moldovenesc for a foray into the world of paintings found in the monasteries of the area. We delighted our eyes with the frescoes painted by Nicolae Grigorescu at the Agapia Monastery, whose realistic and humanized secular style is subscribed to the compositions of some famous Renaissance painters, without losing his uniqueness and personal strength.
Voronet Monastery, also known as the "Sistine Chapel of the East" is another area of inspiration for the Poema Romana collection. Here, we sipped from the famous Voronet blue and enjoyed the mural paintings created at the highest artistic level, with biblical figures rendered in such a natural and lively manner. We admired the frescoes that included folk elements, such as the archangels blowing in the horns, but also the 12 zodiac signs.
The ornaments and decorative elements that we have found in both churches and monasteries are another area of interest for our Poema Romana collection, whether we are talking about niches or arches separated by plaster belts or enclosures decorated with floral and vegetable motifs.
Continuing with the religious, mystical and spiritual foundation of Romanian folklore, Cimitirul Vesel in Sapanta is a source of all the above elements. Decorated in the style of Naive Art as well, the crosses are covered with rich ornaments and playful details that are characteristic of the Maramures style. The color combinations are representative for the place, surprising through their uniqueness in terms of the way and the context in which they were used. The essence of this paradoxical universe is irony - an intrinsic part of the Romanian spiritual heritage. Sometimes soft, other times harsh, sometimes directed at others, other times at oneself, the irony of one's own death is as much a paradigm shift as a return to one's origins. The epitaphs contain doses of healthy humor, interpreting the life of those who are no more, as well as the reason for their death.
The celebration of life, even when it is over, is what we have chosen to bring, on a symbolic level, into our creations. Courage, joy, happiness and playfulness are gracefully intertwined with the overlapping textures of the wallpapers from the Poema Romana collection. Our artists have tried to capture these emotions and then assimilate and tune them into the present moment, rendering them on a background of ceruleum and ultramarine blue.
VLAdiLA’s Poema Romana collection graphically captures the constantly-evolving, powerful and amazing spirit of the Romanian People. It starts, brave and fluid, as a journey back in time. We drove to ancient lands, where the real and the mythical are intertwined, where life and death dance together. Our creations masterfully combine the same eternal elements, bringing together the old and the new, the abstract and the tangible, the traditional and the modern. The roots of creation, stuck deep in the earth beneath us, encouraged us to explore the cultural legacy passed down from generation to generation. In other words, tradition, in all its forms, lies at the heart of our new wallpaper collection.
Wallpapers like a piece of art
Our wallpapers are both hand-painted - with oil and acrylic colours - and digitally drawn, using graphic tablets. Because we like to be versatile and offer our customers options that fit their stylistic needs and budget, our portfolio includes wallpapers that can be printed on three different materials and textures:
- Smooth - matte, even and soft to the touch
- Canvas - creates the illusion of a life-size painting
- Linen - luxurious, fabric-like texture
This way, our wallpapers become a full, 360° sensorial experience through their impressive visual mastery and the dream-like dimensions. Our love and respect for nature exudes from the use of natural, ecological and biodegradable materials. This is why we manufacture wallpapers that have a Vlies base: a non-woven material that offers supreme durability and makes the products easy to install.
