Ion Șinca1950—2014 The official archive of his work

Ion Șinca · Collections · An open question

Where is it now?

Of the 216 documented works, 156 of them have no address today. We know what they look like, what year they were made, how big they are, which exhibition showed them. We do not know which house they are in.

They are not lost — they are unrecorded. A painting sold at an exhibition twenty years ago still hangs on a wall today; it is only that the wall is written down nowhere. Whoever bought it knows. We do not.

That is what this page is for. If you own one of them, if you have seen one at somebody’s house, if you remember who he gave it to — say so. We ask for no proof and publish no names without permission: if you prefer, the collection simply stays “private”, with no mention of who you are. What matters is that the work stops being untraceable.

How to write: press “I know where this is now” under any work and an email opens with its title already filled in. Say where it is, or with whom — as precisely as you wish — and how you know: you bought it, you were given it, you saw it at someone's house.

You do not have to be certain and you do not have to give names. “Somebody took it from the 2007 exhibition, a doctor in Ploiești I think” is good information; it gets written down exactly like that, with the doubt in it. dd@m75.ro

The early years

1976—19897 works

From the same years, the works whose address we do know sit like this: „Ion Ionescu-Quintus” Prahova County Art Museum (13), In the family's collection (2), The Badea Cârțan collection (1).

The nineties

1990—199911 works

From the same years, the works whose address we do know sit like this: In the family's collection (16), „Ion Ionescu-Quintus” Prahova County Art Museum (6), The studio at the „Ion Creangă” school (1).

The two-thousands

2000—200973 works

From the same years, the works whose address we do know sit like this: In the family's collection (6), The Badea Cârțan collection (3), The studio at the „Ion Creangă” school (3), „Ion Ionescu-Quintus” Prahova County Art Museum (1).

The last years

2010—201465 works

From the same years, the works whose address we do know sit like this: In the family's collection (3), „Ion Ionescu-Quintus” Prahova County Art Museum (3), The studio at the „Ion Creangă” school (1).

Why it says “we do not know” and not “private collection”

“Private collection” sounds better and means nothing — it is the polite way of saying we have no idea. An archive where you can no longer see the difference between a work with an address and one without is good for nothing. Here you can see it: the Collections page holds the 60 with a documented address; this page holds the rest.

There are in-between cases, kept apart: 11 works passed through an auction — we know they were for sale, not who took them; 1 is still being documented; and for 2 the sources disagree and give two places at once. All of them are set out as such on the Collections page.

When an answer comes in, the work gets the place and the source — “according to X”, “confirmed by the owner” — and moves into its section. If the owner does not wish to be named, we write only “private collection, confirmed”, which is an entirely different thing from “private collection” written on a guess.

The archive's other open question, just as old, is where they were painted ↗.

Where the works are today ↗ · Where was this painted? ↗ · The archive of the work ↗