Carmen Belean
WORKS
Carmen Belean | Vantage point | 2023 | Öl auf Leinen | 133 x 103 cm
Carmen Belean | Evening read | 2023 | Öl auf Leinen | 90 x 60 cm
Carmen Belean | Storyteller | 2023 | Öl auf Leinen | 110 x 70 cm
Carmen Belean | The blue door | 2023 | Öl auf Papier
Carmen Belean | 14 Summer breeze | 2024 | Öl auf Leinen | 92 x 72 cm
Carmen Belean | Reflections | 2023 | Öl auf Papier | 42 x 30 cm
ARTIST INFO
Carmen Belean
Carmen Belean is known for her realistic, lush oil paintings inspired by nature and themes of femininity, solitude and aesthetics. By combining a discourse on representational painting with a feminist narrative, her work contributes to a broader concept of women’s experience and identity.
The viewer is initially attracted by the privilege of witnessing intimate snapshots of women’s lives, only to discover later that there is also something more complicated and mysterious underlying these images, such as a sense of loneliness or melancholy or something else that is harder to define.
Painting skills are of essential importance in Belean’s work. Carmen Belean studied at the National University of Art in Bucharest (Romania), at the University of Art and Design in Cluj (Romania) and at the Athens School of Fine Arts (Greece). A representative of the Cluj School of Painting, after her BA (Hons) in Painting in 2005 and her MA in Graphic Arts (Lithography) in 2007, she completed a four-year apprenticeship in a painting studio in Athens (Greece). In 2015 she received her PhD in Fine Arts/Painting from the University of Arts in Cluj. Since 2004, she has exhibited nationally and internationally, including in Spain, Greece, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Korea and the USA.
Her series of landscape paintings transforms pool views and their gardens into refuges of female identity and self-determination. Belean’s characteristic use of color underscores the mysterious and ambivalent interplay of distance and proximity, as all views share a pause in timelessness. This reinforces the secluded stillness as a spatial distance to all outsiders. Belean translates the pool with its surrounding garden or the natural spaces she depicts into solitude, in which she is able to find and preserve a new femininity in order to reinvent the garden as a closed place of longing.
BIOGRAPHY
2015 – 2017
Oil Painting Animator at the Oscar-nominated Loving Vincent Film Breakthru Productions Gdansk (PL) /Athens (GR)
2015
Painting Grant S’Cool Gate Oikia Aegina (GR)
2013 – 2014
Painting Grant at the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) Athens (GR)
2012
Painting Grant Idrima Roda Athens (GR)
2011 – 2015
PhD in Painting / Visual Arts (Magna cum Laude) University of Art and Design Cluj (RO)
2009
International Summer Painting Residency Ramirez -Ropero Toledo (ES)
2008
Painting Residency ASFA Hydra (GR)
2007
Painting Residency Rodriguez-Amat Foundation Gerona/Les Olives (ES)
2006 – 2010
Painting Apprenticeship Konstantinos Kerestetzis StudioAthens (GR)
2004 – 2006
MA in Lithography/ Visual Arts University of Art and Design Cluj (RO)
2004 – 2005
Painting and Lithography Scholarship University of Art Prague (CZ)
2004
Schlossberg Stipendium Böblinger Kunstverein Böblingen (DE)
2000 – 2004
BA (Hons) in Painting University of Art and Design Cluj (RO)
EXHIBITIONS
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023
A Room of My Own EXOgallery Stuttgart (DE)
Leisure Bund Bildender Künstlerinnen Stuttgart(DE)
Arcadia Heslach Stadtteilbibliothek Stuttgart (DE)
2022
Paintings Carmen Belean MecenaArt andGastropub Bucharest (RO)
2016
Oil sketches Romasto Art Centre Athens (GR)
2014
Portraits Minerva Cultural Foundation Cluj (RO)
2013
Portraits and other Impressions Ash and Art Gallery Athens (GR)
2012
New impressions Omen Gallery Chania (GR)
2008
Works on paper Fundacion Rodriguez-Amat Gerona (SP)
2006
Lithographs University of Art , Architecture and Design Prague (CZ)
2005
Impulses German Cultural Center Cluj (RO)
2004
Impulses Böblinger Kunstverain, Boblingen (DE)
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024
The Cave 2.0 EXOgallery Stuttgart (DE)
The Big Splash Kunstwerk Fellbach e.v. Stuttgart (DE)
2023
Unveiling Illusions NADA New York (USA)
Neue Mitglieder Bund Bildender Künstlerinnen Stuttgart (DE)
2022
Art Treff InterArt Gallery Stuttgart (DE)
Art in Progress Diploma Festival Combinatul Fondului Plastic Bucharest (RO)
XmArt EXOGallery Stuttgart (DE)
2021
Spotlighting Cluj Mitreo Arte Contemporanea Rome (IT)
Living Art Hospice Contemporary Art Bucharest (RO)
Contemporary and Post-War Art Artmark Bucharest(RO)
The Annual Art Salon Cluj Museum of Art Cluj (RO)
2020
Personal Nature Atelier Intact Centrul de Interes Cluj (RO)
The Annual Art Salon Cluj Museum of Art Cluj (RO)
2010er
2019
Van Gogh Revisited Homerion Cultural Centre Chios (GR)
The Annual Art Salon Cluj Museum of Art Cluj (RO)
2018
Loving Vincent Contemporary Art Centre M. Seoul (KR)
Your Vincent Upper Silesian Art Museum Bytom (PL)
Vincent Noordbrabants Art Museum Den Bosch (NL)
Close Encounters of the 9t Grade Hilton City Art Space Cluj (RO)
Loving Vincent Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam (NL)
2017
Revisited Technopolis Art Centre Athens (GR)
2015
The Royal Society of Portrait Painters London (UK)
2014
Group of five Omen Gallery Chania (GR)
2012
Young Artists in Dialogue Zourdos Gallery Hydra (GR)
2000er
2009
Prousis 17 Artist Run Space Konstantinos Kerestetzis Athens (GR)
2006
Trans-border ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (DE)
Lithographs Expo Transilvania Cluj (RO)
2005
Lithographs Gallery of the University of Art Prague (CZ)