Working across a myriad of mediums, Geta Brătescu was a pioneer Romanian feminist artist. Her inventive explorative practices emphasised through documentation the working processes and theatrical modus operandi within her studio, as well as her symbolic bodily interaction with her materials and space.
Read MoreBrătescu studied literature and art at the Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest and Academy of Fine Arts (1945–1949) and then the Institute of Fine Arts Nicolae Grigorescu (1969–1971), being forced to abandon studying in 1950 by the Communist regime. In the 19-year interim before she returned to art school, she worked as a draughtswoman and book illustrator.
Having had her artistic studies interrupted by the rise of Communism, the once-denied studio itself became a major fixation: a symbol of self-determination, where artistic self and inanimate objects merge. Assisted by Ion Grigorescu, she made the 8mm film The Studio (1978), showing materials and objects becoming alive, being measured by her own body, and in this safe space, embracing diaristic, ritualistic, and mythical elements incorporated into a vast range of art techniques.
Working in a Communist country where socialist realism was the norm, Brătescu's film and collage-based abstract art—rich in references to literature, theatre, and legend—was seen as a radical and political form of protest, and a celebration of female agency.
Largely focusing on the female form for her drawings, wall reliefs, and textiles, Brătescu drew on Aesop, Goethe, Greek myth, Bertolt Brecht, Carl Jung, and many others for inspiration—employing a wide base of craft skills. Examples include Hypostasis of Medea VIII (1980), Fără titlu (untitled) (2012), Esop (Aesop) Drawings Book (1967), The Working Desk (the Artist's Desk) (1971), Towards White (Self-Portrait in Seven Sequences) (1971), and No to Violence (1974).
In 2008, Brătescu received an honorary doctorate from the Bucharest National University for Arts. In 2017, she was selected to represent Romania at the 57th Venice Biennale.
Geta Brătescu participated in many solo and group exhibitions.
Solo exhibitions include Geta Brătescu: The Woman and the Bird, FC Francisco Carolinum, Linz (2021); Geta Brătescu: Freedom of Forms, Kunstforeningen GL Strand, Copenhagen (2021); The Drawing, The Gesture, Hauser & Wirth, Zurich (2020); Geta Brătescu: L'Art C'est un Jeu Sérieux, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2020); Geta Brătescu: The Power of the Line, Hauser & Wirth, London (2019); Geta Brătescu, Tate Liverpool (2015).
Group exhibitions include În Bucureștiul iubit. In Beloved Bucharest, Ivan Gallery, Bucharest (2021); Understudies: I, Myself Will Exhibit Nothing, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2021); Sign Language, MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna (2021); On Adornments, Spike Berlin, Berlin (2020); The Future is Female II, CODA Museum, Apeldoorn (2020); Documenta 14 (2017); 57th Venice Biennale (2017).
Brătescu's work is held in major collections around the world, including Kontakt Collection, Vienna; Art Collection Telekom, Sofia; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tyler Collection of Romanian and Modern Art, University of Tasmania; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; Fundación Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Manuela and Iwan Wirth Collection; Hauser & Wirth Collection; ZKM Collection, Karlsruhe.
John Hurrell | Ocula | 2022
