Gelu Mureșan

The artist

Practice and perspective

Gelu-Ion Mureșan (11 January 1944–26 April 2010), known by the signature “gellu”, was a Romanian painter, graphic artist and filmmaker. His work moves between the still image and the moving image, bringing a graphic imagination to subjects drawn from music, everyday life and fantasy.

Born in Timișoara, he graduated in visual arts there in 1965 and moved to Bucharest in 1969. His career embraced animation, design and writing alongside painting. The artist archive preserves a group of late canvases made in mixed acrylic and oil, signed with the name by which he is presented here.

His published biography places him within Romania’s experimental film culture as well as its visual arts. That history provides a valuable context for looking at the paintings: an interest in transformation, movement and the staging of an image can be considered across both media. It does not mean that every painting illustrates a particular film or that a film screening is an exhibition of his canvases.