Cornel Brudaşcu

Cornel Brudaşcu (b. 1937, Tusa, Romania) is one of Romania’s most significant postwar painters, recognized both for his pioneering engagement with pop art and for his lasting influence on generations of younger figurative painters, notably those of the internationally renowned Cluj School. Based in Cluj-Napoca, where he continues to live and work, Brudaşcu studied at the Institute of Arts Ion Andreescu, graduating in 1962.

In the 1970s, during the only decade of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime that allowed limited cultural exchange with the West, Brudaşcu became acquainted with contemporary American art. Although travel abroad was prohibited, new artistic ideas reached Romania through Western magazines, reading rooms, and informal networks. Publications like the German magazine Popcorn became vital conduits of information and inspiration, offering glimpses into counter-culture, music, and art movements beyond the Iron Curtain. These sources, along with his own experiments in solarised photography, informed a series of striking portraits, depicting fellow artists from Cluj as well as Western pop icons, based on images encountered in foreign publications.

While the works from this formative period adopt the block colour and flat planes characteristic of pop art, they diverge from the style’s crisp edges, favoring blurred contours and softened boundaries. Brudaşcu often drew upon his close circle, portraying family members, friends, and colleagues.

Although some titles and themes aligned superficially with the rhetoric of official proletcult art, emphasizing collective spirit and the construction of a new society, Brudaşcu’s vivid colour palette, painterly freedom, and photographic experimentation marked a decisive break from state-sanctioned norms. His work from this period not only captured the nuances of personal relationships and cultural longing under restrictive political conditions, but also quietly subverted the visual language of propaganda by infusing it with subjective expression and modernist sensibilities.

Over the decades, Cornel Brudaşcu’s practice has retained its balance of intimacy and cultural commentary, bridging the gap between local histories and broader art-historical currents. His legacy endures both in his own paintings and in the artistic trajectories of those he has mentored, securing his place as a foundational figure in Romanian contemporary art.