Maria Mesterou

Maria Mesterou was born in 1941 in Romania. She graduated from the Institute of Plastic Arts in Bucharest. His apprenticeship gave him a truly exceptional mastery of classical techniques. In addition to her university teaching, she travels the country to learn about popular knowledge.

Alongside her husband, Mircea Milcovitch, she regularly goes to an isolated village in the Carpathians. With friends, she formed a group of subversive artists which was built in opposition to socialist realism, the official art of the time. Thus, Maria will live several summers in the heights of the hills. Close to the farmers, she will share their occupations, and will learn weaving and embroidery, elements which will be part of her artistic research.

She also went to a monastery in Moldova where old monks taught her the fundamentals of iconography. Inseparable from her profession as an artist, this activity, which she practiced throughout her life, opened the doors to spirituality for her and had an impact on all of her work.

Furthermore, Maria devotes herself to the restoration of old paintings. This allows him to explore a wide range of techniques, ranging from painting on canvas, through those on copper plates and on wood, to egg tempera on unstretched fabric.

In 1970, she found her husband in France, exiled two years previously. Very quickly, the city of Paris provided him with a workshop. She then devoted herself fully to painting and screen printing which she distributed, among others, with the editions “La Tortoise”. The artist participates on multiple occasions in the very prestigious Basel Fairs and the International Art Fairs in Paris, Washington and New York.

A great specialist in prints, she uses a unique and personal technique to create gradients. This is a fundamental element of his artistic research. The chromatic and tonal refinement is evident. The geometric shapes, both simple and virtuoso, are filled with colors with haunting nuances and heady patterns.

Furthermore, we find in Maria's work a sacred and spiritual dimension which most often manifests itself through remarkable work on light.

From the 1980s, Maria abandoned screen printing and optical art to devote herself to pictorial work close to the painters Antonello de Messina and Jan Van Eyck in technique with a very contemporary dimension in the treatment of compositions. She also creates still lifes, with fascinating plays of light and inert dreamed objects.

Very erudite, Maria Mesterou will be invited for long periods to the Gobelins factory and to the Mobilier National in Paris to teach her know-how and exceptional technique. It is still in demand today.

His work is present in numerous official and private collections. The city of Paris, the French state, the Edmond de Rothschild company, the Pernot-Ricard foundation and the Gravelines Museum own numerous works by Maria. She will also exhibit several times at the Salon des Grands et Jeunes d'Aujourd'hui.

Widely recognized by institutions in the 1970s, Maria Mesterou's work calls for a contemporary rereading as well as wide dissemination to the public.