Ioan Popoiu

Ioan Popoiu received his BFA from the Institute of Fine Arts, Bucharest, Romania, in 1975. After graduation, he participated in most of the Annual and Biennial exhibitions organized in Romania. Ioan Popoiu moved to NYC in 1984. In 1989 he had his first solo show at Morin Miller Gallery in NYC. In 1990, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam included him in a fund-raising event “Unveiling the Communist Romania”, under the auspice of Christie’s. In 1994, one of his works became part of the permanent collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis.

“In my work I use the fluidity of the paint as a form of expression, which gives me the opportunity to explore freely and deeply into the universe of abstraction. I began working with fluids sometime in the 80’s, and I became more involved with it in the early 90’s. Even now it still captivates me. Every one of my works is an exploration of color and texture obtained by juxtaposition of many layers of paint and polymer. I like to develop my work by implementing the laws of nature. The shapes and forms in my paintings speak of my surroundings and they are related to the concepts of time and space. The structure and transparency obtained by overlapping multiple layers of color creates a 3-D effect creating a form of expression which is continuously changing.

In recent years I have used bright, fluorescent colors, perhaps as a response to a previous experience I had as a young artist in my native country, Romania. When I first visited the region of Maramures, I was fascinated by the powerful originality of its folk art. People there use very bright colors as a form of expression of their positive vision of life.”

Since his arrival in the States, Ioan has had several one-man shows and has participated in numerous group shows here and aboard. His works are in Collections in: Austria, Canada, Germany, Italy, Iceland, Japan, Netherlands, Romania, and U.S.A.