Geta Brătescu
Geta Brătescu (*1926 in Ploiești, Romania, †2018 Bucharest) was one of the most important artists of the Romanian post-war period. Under communist censorship, she had to abandon her studies of literature and art at the University of Bucharest, but continued them at the end of the 1960s. Brătescu’s versatile work includes drawings, graphics, collages made of fabric or paper, installations, objects, photographs, experimental films and performances. In the artist's avant-garde oeuvre the boundaries between art and life are blurred; at the center of her works are questions of memory and history, human identity, normativity, and the female gender. Geta Brătescu’s works have been shown internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Documenta, Athens and Kassel (2017); Hamburger Kunsthalle (2016); Tate Modern, Liverpool (2015); Venice Biennale (2017; 2013; 1983; 1960); La Triennale, Paris (2012); Tate Modern, London (2012); National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest (2012); Istanbul Biennial (2011); New Museum, New York (2011); São Paulo Biennial (1987; 1983).
The Traveler
1970
Wooden foldable portable chair, black and white photography, printout on paper mounted on wood
89 × 23.5 cm
Collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
Conceived as a playful self-portrait, The Traveler by Geta Brătescu (b. 1926, Ploiești – 2018, Bucharest) is a wooden folding stool animated by photographs of the artist’s eyes on its circular seat. Emerging from socialist Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship (1967–89), the artist’s practice developed within a cultural climate still shaped by Soviet models of control. Material shortages and ideological oversight constrained artistic production, encouraging strategies of improvisation, subtle subversion, and working within the intimate space of the studio.
Against this backdrop, Brătescu turned toward familiar domestic objects, reconfiguring them as independent carriers of meaning, and allowing them to accumulate fragments of personal mythology. Her practice of bricolage – assembling fragments, images, and gestures – turns everyday materials into means of expression. The studio itself functioned as a utopian microcosm, a world where imagination can override political and physical constraints. In this way, The Traveler embodies Brătescu’s broader utopian vision: a world in which the act of looking becomes travel, and the art space becomes both the destination and the point of departure.