Paul Neagu

Paul Neagu was an internationally important British-Romanian artist, working in diverse media such as drawing, sculpture, performance art and watercolor. He is regarded by critics as one of the pinnacles of the vanguard that emerged in Romania in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing influences from Brancusi, cubism and dadaism, his works (including palpable objects and comestible sculptures) defies easy categorization.

His works can be found in public collections including, among others, the British Museum, London, le Fond départemental d'art contemporain, Seine Saint-Denis, Bobigny, France, the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, the Musee Cantonal de Beaux Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland, the National Museum of Art of Romania, Bucharest, the Philadelphia Art Museum, Philadelphia, USA, and the Tate Gallery, London.

"For Paul Neagu, art is an expression of 'desire in the face of the systems that attempt to inhibit it', as he writes, and desire involves 'the recovery' of what he calls, variously, the 'hyphen,' the 'abstract', the 'gamma', all of which involve the 'bodily', conveyed particularly through the 'figural essence of sculpting, paintings, drawings'. Neagu's works, whatever their medium, are certainly full of desire, as their visceral energy suggests." (Donald Kuspit)