TINCUTA MARIN

Early Years

Tincuța Marin was born in Galati. Romania in 1995. She has talked about seeing her mother painting at her easel, and how her favourite childhood memory recalls the smell of oil paints and her mum’s glass palette. She graduated from the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca in 2019.

Tincuța Marin: Artworks

Tincuța Marin describes her paintings as “witchery and magic”. Driven by her imagination and utilising a creative practice often described as syncretic, Tincuța Marin creates worlds populated by toy-like characters exploring the ideas of good and evil, including Omul de Piatra (Stone Golem) and Bigfoot. Her paintings at the start of the 2020s depicted a dagger-wielding yellow “hero” figure—Marin’s characters blend the human with the architectural, but she also references architecture through arched doors and windows. Later works included bronze sculptures, which often frame the paintings themselves. The Cestrum Nocturnum exhibition of 2026 centred mythic, often female, figures as “protectors” in a world of uncertainties, inspired by Egyptian folklore but also drawing on modernist fragmentation.

• Marin’s 2022 painting When we enter the lair of Bigfoot, Gagafu and Dracovenie sees her yellow hero taking centre stage, grasping his dagger. The work draws on the idea of painted collage and is notable for Marin’s vibrant colour palette.
• In 2024, Marin’s Purring Figure exhibition included sculpture as well as painting and saw a shift to warmer colours. Her eponymous painting Tincuța Marin (2023) features two figures that may be human around a table. It appears that one is focused on a mirror, suggesting perhaps a note of self-reflection.
• 2026’s Cestrum Nocturnum saw Marin’s painting and sculpture moving into a darker colour palette. The exhibition title relates to the flower “Lady of the night” (or night-blooming jasmine), and like that bloom, her works slowly reveal themselves to the viewer creating a contemplative installation.

Tincuta Marin: Select Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Cestrum Nocturnum, Jecza Gallery, Bucharest (2026)
• Where the Sun Sleeps, Oratorio dei Crociferi, Venice (2024)
• Purring Figure, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam (2024)
• Line, Point, Form and Colour, Cfhill, Stockholm (2023)
• Distant Realities, Jecza Gallery, Timisoara (2023)
• Chapter IV—When we enter the lair of Bigfoot, Gagafu and Dracovenie. Let’s hope we get out alive..., Double Q Gallery, Hong Kong (2022)
• Chapter III - When we enter the lair of Bigfoot, Gagafu and Dracovenie. Let’s hope we get out alive..., RKI Berlin (2022)
• Dinozaurii traiesc in cele sapte ceruri suprapuse, White Cuib, Cluj-Napoca (2019)

Select Group Exhibitions

• There were times I wanted to change the world, Paltim Timisoara, Timisoara (2025)
• One Eye Laughing, the Other Crying. Art From Romania. Ovidiu Șandor Collection, The International Cultural Centre, Krakow (2025)
• Autoportret de parcurs, Galeria Parter, Cluj-Napoca (2024)
• autoportret, Galeria Plan B, Berlin (2024)
• Picasso Effect, Museum of Recent Art (MARe), Bucharest (2023)
• Dreams & Games, Tajan Gallery, Paris (2022)
• Mirror, Mirror?, Cfhill, Stockholm (2021)

Further reading

• Tincuța Marin’s Instagram
• A 2021 interview from Les Nouveaux Riches
• Artist profile at Ellen de Bruijne Projects
• Artist profile at Secci Gallery

Tincuta Marin FAQs

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