Background
Ion Grigorescu was born on March 15, 1945 in Bucharest, Romania.
Calea Griviței 28, București, Romania
Bucharest National University of Arts
Ion Grigorescu was born on March 15, 1945 in Bucharest, Romania.
Ion studied at Bucharest National University of Arts.
Since 1967, Ion has been working on issues of sexuality, body and politics from both a communist and capitalist point of view, based on historical changes.
While living under communism, Grigorescu worked in relative isolation and did not publicly exhibit any of his artworks until the Romanian Revolution of 1989, which deposed the country’s longtime dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. Faced with restrictions on both the form and content of his work, Grigorescu limited his practice to the privacy of his studio, as seen in his short film "Male and Female" (1976), or to the countryside, as seen in his photographic collage "Marica at the Seaside" (1971-1974), in order to avoid censorship and persecution. As a result, the camera or his occasional artistic collaborators were often his sole audience. Despite this limited reach and his economy of production, Grigorescu found innovative ways of making work under duress.
In his photographic series from the 1970s, such as "Mimicry" (1975) and "Traisteni" (The Serf) (1976), Grigorescu distilled performances into still images, frequently using himself as his subject. His own body was his primary material, since it was accessible and could be freely manipulated. In powerful, abject photographs, produced throughout the 1970s and during the early 1980s, including the series "Box-Yoga" (1980), "Autosuperpositions" (1977) and "Homage to Bacon" (1978), he pushes his body and mind to physical and psychological limits by contorting himself into various positions, requiring significant strength and focus. Although these are still images, the dynamism of his actions reveals his keen interest in closely observing and recording movement.
Grigorescu also produced overtly political works, including "Dialogue with President Ceaușescu" (1978). This staged film imagines an improbable conversation between the artist and the infamous despot, who is played by Grigorescu, wearing a mask, suit and tie.
After 1990, the painter staged a spectacular comeback with a series of personal exhibitions at performance festivals in Bucharest, Timişoara, Venice, Vienna and Amsterdam.
In 2007, Grigorescu returned to the subject of Ceausescu, who has become a kind of alter ego for the painter, in the work "Post-mortem Dialogue with Ceauşescu". Produced almost a decade after the authoritarian leader’s death, the film tests the purported democracy of post-communist Romania by reviving the ghost of its past.
Ion took part in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including XVI Biennial de Sao Paolo in Brazil (1981), 47th Venice Biennial in Italy (1997) and others.
Currently, he lives and works in Bucharest.
Ion Grigorescu is the member of Prolog group, which was founded by Romanian artists in 1985.
Grigorescu is not a political artist, who reacted to the extremely repressive communism of the Romanian dictator with activist protest. Instead, he refused all contact with officially recognized art of his country. He lived underground, and in his body actions, which continue today and are documented in film and photography, the artist responded to the dominant dynamics of repression in his direct surroundings, even after the Romanian revolution and the collapse of the Ceausescu system.