Autor: Edward Lear

Lica Sainciuc is an artist, illustrator of children books, designer, researcher, who made a significant contribution to the development of the Moldovan Fine arts of both the Soviet and post-Soviet period. Children”s book illustration is his long standing passion, proving him to be an expert on the early school age, when children learn to read books and to appreciate everyday life. Artworks by Lica Sainciuc could be categorized into three stages. Throughout the mid 1970s to mid 1980s the artist”s creative principles and professional preferences had forged. Since the very first experiments and all along his career, Lica Sainciuc has been targeting comic vision, introducing eloquent details to approach authenticity. He grotesquely distorted the rounded forms, laying stress on characteristic gestures, without overloading composition with trivial facial expressions. He had overcome the limitations of the official dogmatic guideline “national in form, socialist in content” featuring Soviet art. He largely contributed in disclaiming of the concept of “minor nature” of the children”s book illustration in the context of Fine arts. Initially, the artist illustrated the oeuvre of the contemporary writers of the Soviet Moldova, Baltic countries and Russia. Particularly noteworthy as they were reprinted many times over the past forty years are the famous ABCs with songs, rhymes, poems – Albinuta by Grigore Vieru and Abecedar by Spiridon Vangheli, the most prominent and internationally known writers of the Republic of Moldova. The second stage of Lica Sainciuc”s art evolved during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the visual art in the republic evolved along the publishing industry. In those times, Lica Sainciuc has illustrated not only works of contemporary Moldovan writers, but also European fairy tales and popular stories. The third stage of Lica Sainciuc”s creative career can be defined as a lasting from the early 2000s until present days, the period of exploring the expressive possibilities of computer graphic applications. The artist continues to work, striving for innovation and the art of L. Sainciuc may be seen as a model, with which to posit arguments in favor of future development of the picture book illustration in Moldova.