Geta Brătescu was one of the pioneers of conceptual art in Romania and has been a central figure of Romanian contemporary art since the 1960s. Her work includes drawings, collage, textiles, photography, performance, tapestry, illustration and film. Within her avant-garde work, she continuously tackled questions related to female subjectivity, gender, memory, and the ongoing examination of the limits of creative expression. As an artist with a long career, Brătescu produced a complex body of work that showed an integration of life and art. Brătescu’s works have been part of many exhibitions and collections around the world, including the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein; Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles & New York; the Camden Arts Centre, London; the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Tate Liverpool; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; documenta 14, Athens & Kassel; the Venice Biennale; the Palais de Tokyo and the Paris Triennial; New Museum, New York; São Paulo Biennial; and Istanbul Biennial. Geta Brătescu represented Romania in the 2017 Venice Biennale with the project “Apparitions”, the first solo show of a female artist in the Romanian Pavilion.

During the 1970s, Brătescu created series of lithographs focused on the artist studio, later also developing the theme of the studio into a film script. Tackling a topic that would remain dear to the artist throughout her career in various forms, The artist studio, 1971 depicts the entrance to the working space given to the artist by the Union of Visual Artists (UAP) during that time. “The studio is myself”, Brătescu used to say. With the belief that art is form, Brătescu insisted that a work of art gets created at the working desk, not in the head. Through its confinement but also symbolic meaning, the studio served in creating the relationship between a domestic and imaginary interior world in Brătescu's practice.