Alexandru Chira Romania, 1947-2011

Alexandru Chira (1947-2011, born in Tăușeni, Romania) was a Romanian painter, draughtsman, and land artist whose work spanned traditional media, conceptual "pictorial poems," and one of Romania's most significant land art projects. He trained at the Fine Art Institute in Cluj (1968) and Bucharest (1972), and went on to teach painting at the Bucharest National University of Arts from 1994 to 2009, following an earlier post at the Fine Art High School in Bucharest (1976-1980).

Chira's practice was distinguished above all by his land art masterwork, De-semne spre cer, pentru ploaie și curcubeu ("De-signs Towards the Sky, for the Rain and the Rainbow"), a monumental ensemble built in his native Tăușeni between 1994 and 2004 - a project that fused sculpture, landscape, and personal cosmology into a singular artistic gesture.

His career was marked by sustained institutional recognition in Romania, including the Romanian Academy Award (1996), two Romanian Union of Fine Art (U.A.P.) Awards for Painting (1993 and 1999), and the rank of Commander in the Order of Cultural Merit, awarded by the Romanian Presidency (2004). He exhibited steadily from the early 1970s onward, with solo shows at venues such as the Simeza and Orizont galleries in Bucharest, the Cluj-Napoca Museum of Art, and the Romanian Cultural Center in New York, culminating in a major retrospective at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Bucharest in 2015.

In the years following his death, international interest in his work grew substantially, with posthumous solo and group exhibitions at institutions such as Lafayette Anticipation and Fitzpatrick Gallery in Paris, Delmes & Zander (Independent NY and FIAC), the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, and ADZ Gallery in Lisbon - reflecting a renewed global recognition of his singular position between painting, poetry, and land art.