Cyclicity in creation: from drawing to memory, from memory to drawing

This study provides a wider view over Romanian contemporary painting from the two national poles of art: Iasi, located in the north-east part of the country and Timisoara, representing the west side of Romania. It is focused on fusing painting and drawing, with an array of works on paper such as drawings, watercolor, altered photographs and mixed media by Smaranda Moldovan and mixed media portraits on canvas by Ioana Palamar. Both study cases present a microcosmos of the intangible cultural heritage with roots in memory, not a collective one, but an individual one – a long term memory and an iconic memory of landscapes from Romania and France. The study shows the importance of memory in contemporary art, even if it was nominated as a cliche. The authors believe that memory has still not been sufficiently offered as an empirical art research method and that memory combined with the two genders, painting and drawing, can produce a new and unique repository of imagery.