The Art Encounters Foundation and the man behind it, Ovidiu Sandor, are championing the Romanian modern and contemporary art scene. The foundation’s latest endeavor: shining a spotlight on Romanian neo-constructivist avant garde artist Stefan Bertalan. For Sandor, who sees contemporary art and culture as among Romania’s most powerful ambassadors, Romanian contemporary art “reflects the complexities, contradictions, and aspirations of a society still navigating its post-communist identity”. Over 250 artworks by neo-constructivist avant garde artist Stefan Bertalan, a fervent observer of the world and its mechanisms, were brought together for the first time in a retrospective exhibition, “Stefan Bertalan – In Tune with the World,” which closed this past weekend.
Bertalan’s work is marked by a pervasive and obsessive curiosity about the world. Motifs like the sunflower and the spiral appear again and again, linked with ideas of ascension, transformation, and utopia. The artist specifically saw the sunflower’s growth towards the sun as signaling another type of ascension and upward spiral (he once lived 130 days with a sunflower plant in 1979, taking documentary photos and mapping all daily changes in a journal). Many drawings investigate upward motion and growth, as well as the interconnectedness of all things, a theme that is shared with the work of other neo-avant garde artists working during the 60s and 70s, who strove to visualize the utopias theorized in the early 20th c.
With such a vast body of work to address, the exhibition was arranged chronologically, beginning with parabolic and geometric drawings and moving into investigations of the natural world. The final room was engulfed in an inflatable—a re-creation of Inflatable Structures (Structuri gonflabile), one of the projects of Sigma, a group Bertalan co-founded alongside Constantin Flondor, Doru Tulcan, Elisei Rusu, Ion Gaita and Lucian Codreanu. This group was born from the first experimental art group in Communist Romania, 111, which Bertalan founded in 1965 with Roman Cotosman and Constantin Flondor. Inflatable Structures (Structuri gonflabile) was first shown during UNESCO Art Week in December of 1974.
Though the Bertalan retrospective may have finished, his work is housed in a new permanent exhibition at the National Museum of Art in Timisoara, which tells the story of these two groups and their contributions to the post-war European neo-constructivist-avant-garde. Timi?oara was a hub for artists like Bertalan, who, under the restrictions of a communist regime, breathed an artistic life-force into the city. “Romanian artists,” Sandor points out, “often work with limited resources but exceptional creativity, resilience, and relevance”. Now, the artistic life of the city continues, as Timisoara hosts the sixth edition of the Art Encounters Biennial, titled Bounding Histories. Whispering Tales, until July 13th. Today, the Art Encounters Foundation hopes to bring more attention to Romanian artists and encourage further engagement with art. Sandor sees the work of the foundation as tangibly “contributing to developing an ecosystem that is an important context for learning, critical thinking and civil awareness”.
Bertalan, through his research, developed a cosmology where humans and nature are fully interconnected. From weather systems to the humble cauliflower, no living thing was too small, too ordinary to spark the artist’s interest. Bertalan even saw his own aging process in connection with nature—a series of self portraits liken the artist’s face to a potato. Other self portraits have the artist’s body dissolving into leaves.
Bertalan’s researcher’s mind is observed by Bernard Blistène in his curatorial statement, where he highlights the artist’s “passion for optics and mechanics, botany and geology, astronomy and all forms of systems” as evidence of “an obstinate desire to understand the world through observation”. Perhaps most illustrative of this desire to understand are the annotations Bertalan scribbled across most of his drawings (often in multiple languages).
Even at the end of his life, Bertalan stayed curious. The series of drawings in the final hallway of the exhibition space, executed in the artist’s final years, clearly show the effects of time on the artist’s hand and eyesight, as the compositions crowd the right side of the paper (Bertalan suffered a stroke in 2008). These, like most of his works, include notes jotted down next to certain key points of the images. Half-sentences and equations, theories, poetry and even humour are all to be found in these annotations–a reward for close looking. The impression is not unlike a scientific logbook, a comparison which Bernard Blistène also noted. It’s a glimpse into the inner workings of a creative mind and his attention to the interconnectedness of all things—an artist truly “In Tune with the World”.
For Olivu Sandor, President of the Art Encounters Foundation, supporting Romanian artists is personal: “Supporting Romanian artists means helping them gain visibility on the international art scene, where their voices—rooted in a complex history and a vivid present—can challenge stereotypes and offer nuanced, authentic perspectives. Contemporary art has the ability to deconstruct simplistic or outdated views of Romania by showcasing its creativity, criticality, and cultural depth”. Through the Art Encounters Foundation, Sandor is not only supporting local artistic ecosystems, but also bringing Romanian art into global conversations.
“Stefan Bertalan – In Tune With The World” was supported by Banca Transilvania, co-financed by AFCN, and realized in collaboration with Esther Schipper and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, with the support of ISHO and the French Institute in Romania, Timisoara.
From to July 13th, 2025, Timisoara hosts the sixth edition of the Art Encounters Biennial, Bounding Histories. Whispering Tales curated by Ana Janevski (MoMA New York) and Tevž Logar (independent curator).
All images Courtesy of Art Encounters Foundation and Remus Daescu.
