GETA BRATESCU
Fără titlu (Untitled)
2012
Collage on paper, 11 parst
21 x 30 cm (each)

The work of the Romanian artist Geta Brătescu (1926 – 2018) is extraordinarily diverse and reflects an engagement with a wide range of media and materials. She worked largely independent of artistic developments in Western Europe and under the difficult conditions that prevailed during the Ceaușescu regime. Geta Brătescu described herself as a “draughtswoman in the service of the line”. Her fondness for collage is likewise closely linked to the concept of drawing and, in her own understanding, amounted to a “drawing with scissors”.

The multi-part collage ‘Fără titlu (Untitled)’, 2012, demonstrates this in exemplary fashion. Conceived as a variation of eleven different collages, the work as a whole forms a harmonious unity which, as Brătescu describes it, generates itself from within: “A form demands another form; there are no preconceived necessities. A form created through its own energy creates another form, which in turn creates.” These are forms that emerge through the spontaneous use of scissors, reflect traces of memories and experiences, and are therefore, above all, to be understood as an intense engagement with the self.