Lascăr Vorel

Born to Czech-Romanian parents in Iaşi, Vorel was the great-grandson of Anton Vorel, a well-known pharmacist and herbalist who had arrived in Moldavia from Bohemia. He spent much of his early life in Piatra Neamţ, where his brothers Constantin and Tudor were to inherit the Vorel pharmacist business (being the last generation to own the practice before its nationalization by the Communist regime).

Lascăr Vorel studied in the German Empire, where he subsequently lived a long part of his life. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he was taught by Franz Stuck, and developed a style influenced by the Vienna Secession and other branches of Art Nouveau.

In time, he adopted an artistic vision which owed inspiration to Paul Cézanne's geometrical guidelines. Although he refused to join any particular group of artists, his work shares common traits with that of several Expressionists (including George Grosz). Many of his paintings are satirical in theme, and center on grotesque caricatures of bourgeois society and its entertainers. Most of them are painted in gouache, and are dominated by blue, grey, and violet tones.

His main stylistic choice was contrasted by works depicting his home region: concentrating on wider compositions and landscapes which included more emotional portraits of peasants and artisans, he made use of lighter tones of color.

After the outbreak of World War I, Vorel incorporated pacifist protests into his paintings — this was the last major subject of his art before his death in Germany (which occurred before the end of the conflict).

Since 1993, Piatra Neamţ has housed a Lascăr Vorel Gallery (part of the Neamţ County Museum Complex), which is the center of a "Vorel Biennale" exhibiting works by contemporary painters.