artist filmmaker visual artist
Geta Bratescu was born Georgeta Ana Comanescu on May 4, 1926, in Ploiesti, Romania, north of Bucharest. Her parents, Gheorghe and Ana (Antonescu) Comanescu, were pharmacists who owned their own drugstore. Their proprietorship affected her when the country came under Soviet influence and Communist control after World War II. She was expelled from the art school because her father was a capitalist.
Geta Bratescu studied at the Faculty of Letters at the University of Bucharest, between 1945 and 1949, and at the Academy of Fine Arts (now Bucharest National University of Arts) under Camil Ressu. She was expelled from the Academy before completing her degree due to the rise of the Communist party - officials criticized her work and suspected her father, a drugstore owner, of being a capitalist, so she was deemed 'of bad origins'. Only in 1969 would she be able to resume her education and studied at the Institute of Fine Arts "Nicolae Grigorescu", receiving her degree in 1971.
In 2008 Bratescu received an honorary doctorate from the Bucharest National University of Arts for "her outstanding contributions to the development of contemporary Romanian art".
After the exclusion from her fine art course, Geta worked as an arts editor, illustrator and animator. She also carried out documentation trips both in Romania and abroad for the Artist's Union. Once she returned to university, she had access to a studio which became the subject of a series of works throughout the 1970s that looked at the studio as a place to redefine the self. In her most famous film, "The Studio", made in 1978 with Ion Grigorescu in a new studio at the Artist's Union, she measures her size in the space, marking her place in the world.
Other works from that period raise questions of self-identity and dematerialisation such as her performance and photography work "Towards White." In the 1980s Bratescu began working with textiles, describing this practice as "drawing with a sewing machine."
Geta has been interested in numerous literary figures, including Aesop, Faust and Medea. The latter was the subject of a series of textile works made using scraps of cloth given to Bratescu by her mother, reflecting her complex relationship with feminism. Creating lines through material has continued within her practice to present days within the series of collages "Jeu des Formes."
In 2017, Romania's Culture Ministry selected the 90-year old Geta to represent Romania at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. She presented a piece of work entitled "Geta Brătescu — Appearances", although she has participated in the Biennale twice before – in 1960, as part of a group exhibition and one more time in 2013 at the Central Pavilion, alongside fellow Romanian artists Ștefan Bertalan and Andra Ursuta.
Geta Bratescu died on September 19 at her home in Bucharest. She was 92.
Geta Bratescu was a leading figure of Romanian Conceptual art who honed her legacy of pioneering abstraction in a Bucharest studio amid the repressive Ceausescu regime and who is particularly known for her film "The Studio", created in 1978, a short film made in collaboration with conceptual artist Ion Grigorescu.
During her career, Geta Bratescu made a great contribution to the development of Romanian visual arts as an artist. A major retrospective of her work was held at the National Museum of Art of Romania in December 1999. In 2015 Brătescu's first UK solo exhibition was held at the Tate Liverpool. In 2017, she was selected to represent Romania at the 57th Venice Biennale. She had participated in the Biennale twice before – in 1960 as part of a group exhibition, and in 2013 at the Central Pavilion, alongside fellow Romanian artists Stefan Bertalan and Andra Ursuta.
Yet as prolific and adventuresome as she was, and as tumultuous as the times she lived through were, Bratescu was not given to lengthy discourses on theory or the relationship between art and politics.
Bratescu’s output took the form of films, collages, photographs, installations, travel journals, drawings, and more over the course of her seven-decade career. Her primary interests included the body and the relationship between art and life, and her work often tackled these themes with a dry sense of humour.
Many critics have ascribed a political dimension to Bratescu’s work, noting the ways in which it might be considered a commentary on the control of women’s bodies by those in power. She often resisted the notion that there was a feminist statement in her work, preferring instead to discuss mythological connections that may not have been immediately obvious to some. (Her use of her mother’s textiles in her work has been cited as evidence of that latent feminist streak, but Brătescu frequently denied this, pointing out that men are tailors, too.) She tended to describe her studio as an “apolitical” space in which she was free to do what she wanted.
Though she rebelled at efforts to categorize her, Bratescu was often called a Conceptualist. Asked how she felt about that description, she sought to bring the focus back to the process of making art.
Quotations:
"What a doctor does in medicine, I did in art."
"When I draw, I know that I actually write using letters invented by me. By drawing, I describe my imaginary universe."
"When I draw, I can say that my hand dances."
"A project gets created at the work desk, not in the head. Art is form."
"Using a metaphor, I see these things exactly as a surgeon does while performing surgery. I cannot label my surgery. I work, that’s all."
Geta Bratescu was a member of the Union of Fine Artists of Romania.
According to her colleagues, Bratescu was a true artist who even in the darkest times maintained her sense of playfulness and freedom. She was also a natural introvert.
Quotes from others about the person
"Bratescu powerful life force went in so many directions, from drawing and graphics and photography to animated videos and tapestry, that even in her 90s she embodied the spirit and passion of a young person. That Geta lived to see her art embraced so enthusiastically on the international level at the 2017 Venice Biennale and at her first New York solo exhibition at our gallery last year, means so much. She will be dearly missed." - Iwan Wirth
"I am so grateful to have had the privilege to visit her studio on a daily basis. Her works, her writings and her studio are her artistic legacy and this is something that will endure and will continue to exist and go on in the future." - Marian Ivan
"Bratescu draws parallels between the studio and the athanor, the alchemist’s forge." - Kate Sutton
"Geta Bratescu alternately dreams, works and plays while the camera explores the space." - Roberta Smith
Geta Bratescu married Mihai Bratescu, who was an engineer and died in 2012, in 1951. The couple gave birth to one son, Tudor.
