Corneliu Michăilescu

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Initially a student of Law, Literature and Philosophy Faculties in Bucharest, painter, sculptor and graphic artist Corneliu Michăilescu took the path of visual art in the wake of the era of industrialization. A chameleonic personality with a rich intellectual curiosity, Michăilescu leaves to study visual arts abroad and chooses to remain a few years in Zurich, where he is visibly influenced by the avant-garde and the ideas of his friends, Tristan Tzara and Marcel Iancu. He returned to Romania in the interwar period, where he joined the Constructivist group of the Integral Magazine, painting in a strong cubist manner and writing, at that time, one of the very few essays on African art in Romanian. Exploring themes such as the world of theatre and the intensity of conflicting emotions, his works remark through strong colours, well-defined volumes and sharp contours. After an enrolment in a medical experiment with mescaline, his artistic creation turns more towards the interior world, the corporeal sensations and the evolution of the human spirit.