Artist statement

Beauty now seems to be everywhere, palpable and painfully overlooked. On bright, clear mornings, the world seems to me like a vast visual, tactile, olfactory, and auditory field  where  abstraction  has  not  yet  appeared…

Marcel Lupșe - diary entry, November 2006

Academic and professional background: 2010 - Doctor of Visual Arts at the University of Arts and Design, Cluj Napoca | starting with 1998 - Head of Department at the "Corneliu Baba" Highschool of Fine Arts in Bistrița | since 1994 - Teacher at the "Corneliu Baba" Highschool of Fine Arts in Bistrița | 1989 - Member of the Union of Fine Artists of Romania, Painting Section | 1979 - Graduate of the Institute of Fine Arts, Cluj-Napoca, class of Prof. Vasile Crișan.

International exhibitions: Starting with 1979, the artist has had over 170 group exhibitions, both in Romania and abroad, and organized over 65 solo exhibitions | 1990 - International Miniature Exhibition (Toronto, Canada) and International Engraving Exhibition (Kanagawa, Japan) | 1991 - Five Romanian Painters (Istanbul, Turkey) | 1996 - Salon of the Academy of Painters of Central Europe, Maison de l'Europe (Paris, France) | 1999 - Six Romanian Artists (Caracas, Venezuela) | 2001 - Zielona Gora (Poland) | 2004 - Salons of Moldova (Chisinau, Republic of Moldova) | 2009 - International Biennial of Fine Arts, Delta Galleries (Arad, Romania) 2012 - EURARCA International Symposium Exhibition, Kassel, Germany | 2019 - Romanian Contemporary Art Exhibition, Burg 32 Gallery (Mecklenburg, Germany) | 2019 - Exhibition of the International Painting Symposium "In the Footsteps of Courbet - Galerie de L`Ancien Poste" (Besancon, France) | 2022 - International Symposium "Art in the Garden" - Botanical Garden (Talin, Estonia) | 2023 - International Symposium "Gallery - Alte Kachelofenfabrik" (Neustrelitz, Germany) | 2024 - "Martha Bibescu" International Visual Arts Salon at the Brâncovenești Palaces (Mogoșoaia, Romania).

Awards and distinctions: 2023 - OPERA OMNIA Award of Excellence, International Biennial of Art (Arad, Romania) | 2022 - ION ANDREESCU Award of the Romanian Academy | 2017 - Painting Award of the Intercounty Branch of UAP CLUJ (Bistrița, Romania) | 2014 - Honorary Citizen of Bistrița-Năsăud County | 2010, 2020 - Painting Award of the Municipality of Bistrița (Romania) | 2009 - UAP Award - LASCĂR VOREL Fine Arts Biennial (Piatra Neamț, Romania) | 2001 - Painting Award at the Moldovan Salons (Chișinău, Republic of Moldova) | 2000 - National Order of Faithful Service, in the rank of Knight (Bucharest, Romania) | 1997 - Painting Award at the LIVIU REBREANU Salons (Bistrița, Romania).

The bundle that stands out, particularly strikingly, in the collection of images defining Lupșe, belongs to our plant environment. It refers to the anonymous immediacy that the painter calls "from Ion's garden," to the medicinal plants, the treasure of the capable elder women, amazed, as if by a sympathetic illness, when Marcel, without haggling, would greedily buy the entire harvest from the stall. After intersecting their scents there, with gentle stubbornness, these weeds, now hanging up in the space of the frame, do not alienate their secret healing powers through this leap.

Dan Hăulică, “A Therapy for the Luminous and Worthy Soul,” text from the album ”Marcel Lupșe – A painter” EIKON Publishing House, Cluj Napoca, 2007, p.9

Marcel Lupșe oscillates between broad naturalism - which can reach metaphysical and hallucinatory realism - and an idealistic conception of pictorial language as pure creation.

Oliv Mircea, “The Principle of Sufficient Grace,” text taken from the album “Marcel Lupșe - A painter”, EIKON Publishing House, Cluj Napoca, 2007, p.79​

Painting thus becomes knowledge offered to the eye, teaching us their forms and virtues of orientation, emotion, energy, as well as the virtues of encountering these forms. In this type of painting, meaning and abstraction are mutually conditioned.

Oliv Mircea, “The Principle of Sufficient Grace,” text taken from the album “Marcel Lupșe - A painter”, EIKON Publishing House, Cluj Napoca, 2007, p.79​

Insofar as artists can be defined according to their particular sensitivity to one of the realms, Lupșe is undoubtedly a painter of the plant world. In his works, regardless of when they were created and the nature of their themes, one constant presence is his obsession with texture and its infinite nuances.

Pavel Șușară, “Marcel Lupșe. Art review”, excerpt from "România literară”. no. 46, Bucharest, 1997​

And if we accept that painting is a field of meditation, of feeling, we must also accept that the painter is a seeker of traces.

IOAN BIZĂU (priest), excerpt from the exhibition catalog "Descânt," Museikon Alba Iulia, MEGA Publishing House 2019, p. 9​

An artist with an equal vocation for monumental construction and careful observation of small spaces, he identified the plant world as an environment with great potential in both senses. Here, he can manifest himself as a researcher who looks carefully through the lens of a microscope, but also as an architect who rejoices in the vicinity of great edifices.

Pavel Șușară, “Marcel Lupșe. Art review”, excerpt from "România literară”. no. 46, Bucharest, 1997​

A dissociative spirit with immense analytical capacity, [Marcel Lupșe] pursues in depth all the sonorities of substance, which he invokes directly or only through representation.

Pavel Șușară, “Marcel Lupșe. Art review”, excerpt from "România literară”. no. 46, Bucharest, 1997​

They were around for a long period, respectfully acknowledged in the Middle Ages, brought into ancient monastic gardens, in carefully reserved sections, where the speech of the centuries gave them a name that has remained engraved, in keeping with their beneficial modesty: simples, having their origin, abbreviated, in simple medicine, proclaiming a modest efficiency without any other addition. Our current epoque, not only on a single meridian, rediscovers their legitimacy, dedicates exhibitions to them, which are in fact true rituals of rehabilitation.

Dan Hăulică, “A Therapy for the Luminous and Worthy Soul,” text from the album ”Marcel Lupșe - A painter” EIKON Publishing House, Cluj Napoca, 2007, p. 11​

It is an entire visual symphony that the artist has been developing for a long time, with patience, meticulousness, precision, and rigor, but which now, in the context of the tense times we are living in, has become a kind of vademecum, more relevant than ever.

Vladimir Bulat, "Marcel Lupșe: a kind of vademecum," excerpt from the article published in Observator Cultural, Arts section, no. 1037, Oct. 20, 2020​

It is also a plea for turning our face towards nature, to the relationship that man once had with it, to the times when man obediently listened to the voice and whisper of the universe, its dynamics and magic, when reason submitted to feeling, and beauty was not so much a lofty philosophical concept, as it was a formative and natural part of everyday existence.

Vladimir Bulat, "Marcel Lupșe: a kind of vademecum," excerpt from the article published in Observator Cultural, Arts section, no. 1037, Oct. 20, 2020​