Radu Dumitru

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Radu Dumitru developed a sculptural language that merges material experimentation with metaphysical reflection. Trained at the Ion Andreescu Institute of Fine Arts in Cluj-Napoca, where he graduated in 1985 from the Sculpture Department, he later pursued doctoral studies in Materials Science at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, completing his PhD in 2006. This rare combination of artistic and scientific education defines the precision of his creative process and his sensitivity to the transformation of matter into form and meaning. His artistic practice revolves around the concept of genesis, interpreted both in its biblical sense and as an inquiry into the origins of artistic creation itself. Working primarily in bronze, Dumitru engages with the medium’s tactile immediacy, evoking the primordial gesture of modelling clay into human form. Within this exploration, music functions as an immaterial counterpoint to sculpture - a structural and conceptual rhythm that traverses his entire body of work. The recurring funnel-like shape, reminiscent of wind instruments, becomes a metaphor for breath and creation, for the passage between the material and the spiritual. Since the late 1980s, Dumitru has exhibited extensively, with solo exhibitions at Galeria Orizont (1988), Simeza Gallery (1995, 1999, 2003), the National Theatre Gallery (2000), and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Râmnicu Vâlcea (2004), among others. His works have also been shown abroad, including in Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Japan, Hungary, Germany, and Italy. Parallel to his studio practice, he has contributed to the formation of younger generations of artists as a lecturer in sacred art at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Bucharest. A member of the Union of Visual Artists of Romania and of the UNESCO International Association of Art, Radu Dumitru’s sculpture occupies a space between material discipline and spiritual resonance. Through the abstraction of form and the refinement of bronze surfaces, his oeuvre proposes a silent meditation on the creative act - one in which matter, sound, and spirit converge in balance.