Composition 

Ion Alin Gheorghiu created this untitled composition using mixed media in his native Romania. The imagery is complex, a series of overlapping and interlocking shapes and patterns, evocative of natural forms and perhaps also the human figure. Gheorghiu was associated with a generation of Romanian artists who sought to revive the avant-garde spirit in the decades following World War II, a period during which artistic expression was heavily policed by the institutions of the Eastern Bloc. His work, therefore, can be understood as part of a broader cultural resistance against state-sponsored artistic styles such as socialist realism. We might ask, what was the public role of art in this time and place? Did abstraction represent a kind of visual code? Was the politics of imagery as important as its aesthetic qualities? To fully understand Gheorghiu’s composition, scholars will want to look at the social conditions of its making and its reception. What galleries exhibited his work, and who was buying it? By exploring these questions, we begin to understand art not as existing in a vacuum, but as contingent on its social and institutional context.