Teodor Graur

Teodor Graur (b. 1953, Pogăceaua, Maramureș, Romania) lives and works in Bucharest, Romania. He graduated from the "Nicolae Grigorescu" Institute of Fine Arts in 1976. He has received the Romanian Union of Fine Artists Award (2000, 2006) and the Romanian Union of Fine Artists Award for his management of HT003 Gallery (2007).

Graur is one of the prominent artists of the 1980s and the transitional period of the 1990s, significantly influenced by postmodernism. He incorporates performance and installation avant-la-letter in his practice, engaging in painting, photography, sculpture, ready-made, and video. Between 1994 and 1996, he co-founded the "Euroartist" group with Olimpiu Bandalac.

His recurring themes include ecology, the post-industrial world, the condition of the new man in totalitarian society, and a general questioning of the artist's status in the Eastern Bloc, as well as the tensions within the Balkans and between East and West. Graur utilises ready-mades, objet trouvé, and artefacts of consumer society, blending them with a playful and critical spirit alongside local archaic and spiritual symbols. He creates new icons and cult objects for a dystopian world, making him an emblematic artist of the endless transition that Romanian society underwent in the 1990s and 2000s.

Graur exhibited in important galleries and institutions, such as ArtSafari, Bucharest, ArtEncounters Timisoara, Nicodim Gallery Los Angeles, Plan B, Cluj-Napoca, tranzit/Bucharest, and he also participated in the Venice Biennale as part of the "Context" project by Alexandru Patatics (2001) and with the installation "La Nave Romania" (1997), the Istanbul Biennale (1995), and the São Paulo Biennale as part of the "Meta" project by Călin Dan (1994).

His works are included in significant collections such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Bucharest, the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, the Essl Collection in Vienna, and Galerie Nächst St. Stephan in Vienna, Austria.