Mircea Ciobanu

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Little known in Romania, but famous in Western Europe, Mihai Mircea Ciobanu was a painter, sculptor and writer. He was born in a family of intellectuals, who instilled, through education, in their two sons the desire for intellectual performance. Between 1969 -1973 he attended the courses of the Nicolae Grigorescu Fine Arts Institute in Bucharest, with Corneliu Baba as his tutor, whose influence marked him. Nonconformist, visionary, he quickly configured his own artistic individuality. In a short time, his impetuous personality no longer “fit” in the suffocating space reserved by the communist regime for artistic manifestations. With the first opportunity, in 1981, the young artist emigrated and settled in Switzerland, in Lausanne. The art of Ciobanu portrays him as a follower of Rembrandt, Goya and El Greco, tackling the great themes of painting, both mystically and satirically. In 1983, he created for the Catholic church of Saint-Sulpice, near Lausanne, frescoes and stained-glass windows of particular beauty. In 1984, he exhibited paintings in both Paris galleries of Katie Granoff, the same art dealer that launched Marc Chagall, among others. In the same years, he was hosted with his creation by the prestigious Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo – Brazil, and in 1986 at the Rockefeller Collection in New York.