Born in 1945 in Bucharest, Ion Grigorescu is one of the most distinguished artists of the Romanian artistic Neo‑avant‑garde, being also a member of the Prolog group. Proposing a wide‑ranging corpus of works—from painting to photography, from body art to video performance, from painting of Orthodox churches to diary—which do not necessarily comply with the historical canons of art, Ion Grigorescu is permanently on the lookout for “roads and exits from roads.” Aiming to understand the subsidiary, but also subversive, role of art, the artist is strengthening art’s coming closer to one’s own life, to “mixed or unexplored fields,” seeking to call into question both the traditional frameworks of artistic practice, and the conventions of reading and interpreting art. The complex and singular pursuit of his artistic practice shows an unexpected attraction to the familiarity of daily postures, to the unmediated reality, and fluctuates between an understanding of art as a strategy of self‑knowledge, as a form of social engagement and as a modality of exploring a spiritual dimension. What prevails in Grigorescu’s art is the willingness to tackle themes pertaining not so much to the condition of art, as to the individual condition, and entering into a dialogue with the artistic and intellectual preoccupations of his time, thus contributing to the articulation of a critical artistic consciousness capable of defining another type of conceptual and symbolic approach to the profound structures of the lived realities.
