Lena Constante

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Lena Constante (1909-2005) was a Romanian artist and essayist, known for her tapestries and stage design, as well as for her memoirs that reminisce the painful years of being a political prisoner in communist Romania. Originally trained as a painter, after her 12-year imprisonment, she could no longer exhibit her works due to political reasons. Instead, Constante turned to tapestry. Given her involvement in the activities of the Romanian School of Sociology led by Dimitrie Gusti during the interwar period, her tapestry works were heavily influenced by Romanian folk art. Using fragments of fabrics from folk dress and embroideries, Constante’s collage-based tapestries reconfigure their aesthetic constitution. Through traditional motifs such as the sun, the moon, water, fire, the fir tree leaf, her works reimagine a novel genealogy of Romanian art. From the 1980s onwards, her works have received local and international recognition, being exhibited in the Netherlands, Hungary, Belgium, Turkey, France, Austria, Sweden, Romania.