Romanians who add value to the national brand: Geta Bratescu, the important figure of the Europe’s avant-garde scene

With an impressive career spanning more than six decades, Romanian artist Geta Bratescu returned under the spotlights as an important figure of the Europe’s avant-garde scene in 2017, when a huge focus was on the Romania’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Later on, her works were included in Documenta 14, had a solo exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre in London and signed under Hauser & Wirth, which organised her first solo presentation in New York. Currently, the London Tube Map has her design, as part of a year-long program dedicated to women artists launched by the commissioning organisation Art on the Underground.

“Geta Bratescu’s presence at Biennale Arte 2017 was aimed at communicating art’s capacity to invent narratives that transcend the gloomy climate of the contemporary world, by means of an artistic reflection that highlights the transformative strength of femininity as the consummate embodiment of a ‘nomadic subject’. Her art finds itself in full consonance with the return to materiality, to the power of the artistic imagination, to art’s power to give shape,” explained Magda Radu, curator of the exhibition. Unfortunately, earlier this year, the artist has died at the age of 92. Her work has been exhibited by the Galerie im Taxispalais (Innsbruck), the National Museum of Art of Romania (Bucharest), A Foundation din Liverpool, Index Foundation (Stockholm), e-Flux (New York), Istanbul Biennale, MACBA Barcelona, Mumok Vienna, Kalmar Museum din Suedia, Galerie Barbara Weiss (Berlin), MOMA New York and Tate Museum (London).