Pavel Ilie Romanian, 1928-1995

Pavel Ilie (b. 1925, Dumbrava) graduated from the Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of Arts in 1955, after which he became an assistant at the Institute. He officially debuted as a painter in the 1950s. In the following decade, starting in the 1960s, he established the principles of his unique artistic language within the local artistic context, showing interest in new forms of sculpture and installation, embracing a profoundly conceptual constructivist approach.

In 1969, he participated with Group 111 in the Nuremberg Biennale. After the 1970s, he gained recognition for his "lyrical constructions," as he called them, intertwining the most rudimentary materials, such as adobe and wood, with elementary and complex geometric thinking. In the early 1970s, he took part in a series of important exhibitions and residencies for his career, both in Romania and in Scotland and England, alongside contemporaries such as Horia Bernea, Paul Neagu, and others, being selected by Richard Demarco. In 1974, he had his first solo exhibition as part of the Art and Energy exhibition at the New Gallery.

In 1977, he emigrated to Switzerland, where he worked as a professor at Collège de Saussure in Geneva and continued to exhibit in various international institutions. In 1993, after retirement, he moved to Canada, where he lived with his wife, Viorica Velescu Ilie (1924 - 2007), until the end of his life in 1995. His works are part of important collections both abroad and in Romania, and he is also featured in significant research and recovery exhibition projects in museums and contemporary art institutions such as MNAC, Salonul de Proiecte, the Institute of the Present, MARe, and ArtEncounters.