George Matei Cantacuzino

The Romanian cosmopolitan G. M. Cantacuzino (1899–1960) is one of the least known polymaths of the 20th century. In view of that age of extremes, both his „Classical attitude“, which links Modernism to Tradition and aesthetics to ethics, and his intellectual integrity are quite remarkable. He was born in Vienna to aristocratic parents, and was educated in Switzerland, Bucharest, and Paris. Back in Bucharest, he was to become the unchallenged integrative figure of the moderate Modernism in Romania; he still is the most prolific architectural theorist of that country. He was also professor of architectural history and theory in Bucharest, painter and curator, the first Romanian correspondent of „L’Architecture d’Aujourd´hui“, honorary corresponding member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, honorary citizen of New York, and much more. With his liberal political attitude being disapproved of by both fascists and communists, he experienced imprisonment, social exclusion and an untimely death. This study tries to place Cantacuzino’s momentous life and work in the architectural, cultural, economic and political contexts. It also attempts to outline his artistic and intellectual family – from Vitruvius via Palladio to Schinkel and Loos, from Wölfflin to Wittkower, from Plotinus via Bergson to Camus, from Montaigne via Goethe to Rilke, Valéry, and T. S. Eliot. It is the first monograph on a Romanian architect ever to be published by a major European publishing house. Dan Teodorovici is an architect and curator living in Stuttgart. His PhD thesis G. M. Cantacuzino (1899–1960): Dialogik zwischen Tradition und Moderne received in 2010 a summa cum laude at the University of Stuttgart.