Geta Brătescu was born in Ploiești in 1926. She initially enrolled at the University of Bucharest, both at the Faculty of Letters (1945–1949, under George Călinescu and Tudor Vianu) and at the Academy of Fine Arts (under Camil Ressu). Unfortunately, she was prevented from obtaining the latter degree, with the recently established communist government expelling her because of her perceived privileged social status. Resilient and undeterred, Brătescu found work as an arts editor, illustrator and animator for the newspaper Secolul 20 as well as documentalist for the Uniunea Artiştilor Plastici din România (Romanian Artists’ Union), the latter position leading her to travel across Romania and beyond its borders. She ultimately finished her training at the Institutul de Arte Plastice ‘Nicolae Grigorescu’, from which she graduated in 1971. Later, in 2008, she received an honorary doctorate from the Universitatea Națională de Arte București (Bucharest National University of the Arts). Navigating between post-war freedom and communist censorship, Brătescu – like many of her contemporaries – found safety in isolation and turned her studio into a sheltered creative space. This studio, both the physical and mental version, had to be impermeable to sociopolitical discourses. The resulting aesthetic was naturally personal, handmade, low-tech and mundane.
This period inspired a striking series entitled Censored Self-Portrait in which the artist depicted herself with her mouth and eyes sealed by paper strips. Surprisingly enough, this self-imposed censorship would continue to prove inspiring, especially for the blind drawings she produced in the 1990s and 2000s – a pure exercise in controlled freedom. Her studio, as a creative space, was both a refuge and springboard, a feeling carried over in Brătescu’s best-known film, soberly entitled The Studio and created alongside Ion Grigorescu in 1978. The film is a live reflection on empty and filled space through body movements and manipulations. Several performative films would follow: Self-Portrait, Towards White (1975) and From Black to White (1976).
Through space, Brătescu concurrently explores and illustrates her take on feminine sensibility and how women occupy and perceive space. Her wall installation No to Violence (1974), with its amassed bandages, offers a striking example of this artistic research, while works or series such as Mother Courage (1965), Portraits of Medea (1979), Mothers (1997) and Women (2007) offer a more explicit perspective on the topic.
In the following decade, Brătescu continued her investigations of space and place, but introduced textiles as artistic materials. She described her process at the time as ‘drawing with a sewing machine’. More generally, the artist borrows impressions from various sources of inspiration, ranging from travel to literature, and translates them into delicate shapes built from hesitant lines.
In 2017, Brătescu represented her native Romania at the 57th Venice Biennale, an event she had taken part in twice before as part of national group exhibitions, in 1960 and 2013. The same year, she was awarded the Ordinul naţional Steaua României (National Order of the Star of Romania) by the country’s president. A busy year, 2017 also saw Brătescu hold a comprehensive retrospective (only the fourth outside of Romania) in Belgium at the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent. Among other recent solo exhibitions of note were those held at: the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, Germany (2018); Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles (2018) and New York, USA (2017); Camden Art Centre, London, UK (2018); Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany (2016); Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK (2015); and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkley, USA (2014).
Brătescu passed away in Bucharest in 2018.
