ALINA CREȚU

But more than that, the first work that really made an impression on me was… not for sale! It was the gorgeous Saint Jerome Writing by Caravaggio, in the Galleria Borghese, in Rome. What a work of art! Its composition is almost of severe simplicity. On one side, an elderly man wrapped in a deep red cloak bends over a heavy book; on the other side, resting on a pile of volumes, lies a human skull. Between them, the arm stretched, holding the quill above the inkwell – a bridge between the living mind and its inevitable end. Everything else is darkness. Caravaggio does not show him in glory, but in the very midst of his work: absorbed, ascetic, almost exhausted. The skull is a memento mori, a reminder that our time is finite, and the visual rhyme between the old man’s head and the skull is quietly unsettling. I think this is why the painting moves me so deeply.

I recognise in it something so deep. Much of my own work is, in a sense, an act of translation – from science into policy, from regulation into a language a farmer can trust. Jerome reminds me that such work is never truly finished, that our time is limited, and that this is precisely what gives it its dignity. Every time I return to it, judgement is suspended; what remains is a pure attraction, impossible to explain fully, which is perhaps the truest definition of intuition. 

WIN Gallery: Your collection unfolds between Romania and France, two countries with distinct cultural identities. How does the experience of acquiring art change from one country to the other? What are the particularities of the selection process? 

Alina Crețu: The two countries offer me two very different ways of encountering art, and I have come to value both precisely for their differences. In Paris, the market is old, dense and highly codified. A work arrives accompanied by a history, a lineage, a critical context already well established; selecting it is, in a sense, entering into dialogue with a tradition - in the sense of habits and connexions between passionate people. One chooses from what has already been settled. In Bucharest, everything is fresher and, at the same time, more fragile. You can meet the artist, visit the studio, follow the formation of a visual language as it happens. Here, I have the feeling that I am not simply acquiring a work,  but participating  in something that is still taking shape – supporting a voice before it has found its full resonance.  

WIN Gallery: Works of art become part of the collector’s personal universe. How do you choose the place of a work within your living or working space? Does it influence the way you relate to that space? 

Alina Crețu: A work is never simply ‘placed’, it always searches for its own place. Some ask for light and distance, others for intimacy and a closer look. I often live with a new work for a while, moving it from one wall to another, until I feel that it has settled – that it has found the spot where it can breathe. And yes, the space changes. A room that hosts an authentic work ceases to be merely functional; it becomes a place in which one thinks differently – more slowly, more attentively. In a living space, where days are often filled with memories, as happy or sad life could be for us, a painting on the wall is a quiet reminder that not everything of value can be quantified. 

WIN Gallery: Taking part in WIN Gallery`s events - most recently, the opening of ‘Dance on the Surface of Being’ in March 2026 – gave you the opportunity to meet new artists and discover different artistic perspectives. Which of the artists and works encountered in this context resonated deeply with your sensibility? 

Alina Crețu: What touched me the most was „Agripina, The Sybil” by artist Ciprian Istrate. I remember standing in front of it longer than I had intended. What kept me standing there was the gaze: direct, calm, almost inquisitive – as if the face in the painting was not the one being looked at, but the one doing the looking. I was equally struck by the choice of subject. The Sibyl Agrippina belongs to the long tradition of the prophetesses of antiquity, whom Renaissance painters portrayed as figures able to see beyond their own time. Here, however, she is neither solemn nor distant; she has the freshness of a contemporary face, with its freckles and a barely perceptible softness about the lips. I found in this a beautiful continuity between the great iconographic tradition and today’s sensibility: the past is not repeated, but quietly reinterpreted.  

The title of the exhibition seemed to me, moreover, profoundly apt. What I seek in art is precisely that point at which the surface allows the eye to glimpse something of the depth beneath. In that sense, the evening confirmed for me why such events matter: they are not merely social occasions, but places where a collector’s eye continues to be educated.