Grigorescu, Ion: Self-portrait in the Kitchen Ironing (1976)

ION GRIGORESCU (1945, Bucharest) is one of the most prominent figures of contemporary Romanian art. His works and actions were born from experimenting with a wide range of visual art forms, strongly criticizing the history of the last 40 years. Grigorescu is one of the few artists with a multifaceted practice, who has regularly dealt with the taboo of our age: namely, the body. His own body became the material and the medium of art, a carrier of mental images. His performances can be interpreted as “post-happenings,” in which the emphasis is not on temporality but on the photographic moment, which, however, still has a performative character. His works, like many other works of art from the seventies and eighties, were only publicized much later.