What form does the present take when viewed through the lens of the past century of Romanian art? The title of this auction, The Shape of Today, does not attempt to fix a definition, it opens a field of enquiry and repositioning. Here, “Form” operates as a statement of position, articulated through visual means in relation to the historical and cultural conditions in which these works were produced. “Today” is not a fixed point, but the result of successive layers that continue to shape it.

The selection brings together artists for whom Romanian modernity represented, in different ways, a question of language and stance. The historical avant-garde remains a structural reference. Marcel Iancu, Victor Brauner, Jules Perahim and Jacques Hérold replaced mimetic description with an autonomous visual system in which form becomes an instrument of reflection rather than a vehicle of representation. The imaginary assumes a critical function, while personal mythology acquires the weight of resistance. Brauner developed an iconography of metamorphosis and fractured identity; Perahim articulated an unstable visual narrative shaped by ambiguity and deliberate distortion; Hérold explored automatism and the organic dynamics of form; Iancu positioned his language at the intersection of architecture and painting.

Geta Brătescu employed drawing as a site of self-interrogation, a terrain in which gesture becomes a means of reflecting on identity and the limits of representation. In parallel, Paul Neagu conceived form as an articulated structure with symbolic and sensory implications, constructing visual systems in which object, body and idea operate interdependently. Together, they delineate a direction in which artistic practice approaches research and theoretical formulation.

The sculptural dimension is sustained by the presence of George Apostu, whose work reduces the human body to compact, near-archaic volumes. Whether in sculpture or drawing, the figure is treated frontally and with concentration, through an economy of means that recalls a rural memory translated into a modern register.

A distinct trajectory within the selection is represented by Sabin Bălașa’s Mirage. His painting constructs a recognisable universe populated by elongated figures, personal mythologies and cosmic scenarios. Beyond the divided critical responses his work has elicited, Bălașa remains an artist who established a coherent and immediately identifiable visual language, whose narrative force has left a lasting imprint on the public imagination of recent decades.

The selection further includes Vasile Grigore, whose painting remains grounded in a Post-Impressionist tradition and chromatic balance; Horia Damian, oriented towards monumentality and abstraction; Constantin Piliuță, committed to a restrained and concentrated figuration; Felix Aftene, working within a symbolic register; and Adrian Ghenie, who reinterprets recent history through a layered pictorial language in which the figure is continually reconfigured.

Through this succession of positions, the auction proposes a reading of Romanian contemporaneity as a space of continuities and ruptures. The Shape of Today does not designate a unified style, but emerges from negotiations between avant-garde and neo-avant-garde, mythology, collective memory and alternative practices. The selection invites reflection on the extent to which the present of Romanian art can be understood without acknowledging the layers that continue to shape its contours.