Radu Florea - Artist Interview

Category: Artist Interviews

Radu is a painter from Targu Mures in Transylvania, Romania. Self taught, Radu has exhibited his artwork all over Romania, as well as Greece, Belgium, Hungary and France. We were delighted to meet him and hope you enjoy readng the interview.

David Field: When did you first realize you wanted to be an artist?

Radu Florea: I enjoyed drawing and painting since I was a child. Discovering the chromatic energy of the oil colours more than twenty years ago made me realise that painting would be a part of me forever.

DF: If you could describe your work with one sentence, what would it be?

RF: Faithfull to the traditional means of oil painting, I push myself further on into the gestural movement of line and colour, in a complex interaction with the surface, until that inner vital sign is bursting out in an expressionistic message of my works.

Radu Florea | State of Balea XII (Triptich). Acrylic and Oil on Canvas - 2100mm x 1000mm, 2014

DF: Can you tell me how your art style has changed, if at all, over the years?

RF: Slowly but surely, after discovering in the 90's, the tensions in the modulating line and vibrating strong colour, I was attracted by the Fauves French group and German Expressionism. Ten years ago, working on the balance between figurative and abstract compositions sustained by the energy of the pure vibrating colours, I switched on to the gestual 'painting in action' towards a more energetic non-figurative approach of the theme.

DF: What project are you working on now?

RF: It is called 'Sebastian, seen/unseen' a sensorial manifesto, a different esthetique of pain and sufference. In February 2016, I travelled and studied along with the CARPART group (composed of five Transylvanian artists) to Madrid and Toledo, Spain. We studied for the theme of the martyrdom in El Greco's art, as a personal message. It is my social way of reaction against the religious terrorist acts that occur today in the world.

DF: Choose one piece of your art and give me a critique?

RF: It is an interpretation after El Greco/s 'Laokoon' which is one of the most revealing piece's of art in the world for the human sufference. I tried to approach it in dark tones of vibrating shadows of China green, Sap green and Prussian blue with pale yellow Ochre. I painted it with blurred, vibrating contours and shapes that suggest the anxiety and the struggle facing death of the Trojan priest and its sons.

DF: Where do you find inspiration for your work?

RF: Inside and outside of me, lately in El Greco's works exhibited in the Prado Museum, Madrid.

DF: What was the last show you participated in?

RF: Between 27th of July- 13th of August 2016, I had a solo exhibition of eighteen works. The works were from the project that I am still working on 'Sebastian- the Idol, Sebastian- seen and unseen, Melancholia-Sebastian' (this is the full title of the project). The exhibition was in the Elite Art Gallery, Bucharest, and was curated by the reknowned Romanian art critic, Oliv Mircea.

DF: Who’s your favourite living artist and why?

RF: I have many of whom are only living through their art, but that's enough for me.

DF: Do you collect other people’s art, if so, who?

RF: I only have some works from former colleagues and my partner's works, for she is also a painter, a Carpart group member.

DF: If you had to display 3 works of art in your home forever more, what would they be, including your own?

RF: This is a hard decison, but here goes.......

Improvisation no.19 by Wassili Kandinsky

Door Painting by Willem de Kooning

and the 'State of Balea XII' a triptych I did two years ago.