Nicolae Comănescu approaches painting as an act of accumulation. It is an ongoing gathering of color, material, memory, and lived experience. Rather than making discrete images, he constructs environments where surfaces, objects, and fragments of everyday life become carriers of layered histories. Furniture pulled from domestic interiors, worn fabrics, street dust, ash, and salvaged panels enter his work not as neutral supports but as materials already charged with meaning. Upon these surfaces, Comănescu builds dense fields of color and drawing, allowing multiple realities, those that are political, erotic, urban, and personal, to circulate within the same visual space.
Born in 1968 in the industrial city of Pitești during the height of Romania’s communist era under Nicolae Ceaușescu, Comănescu belongs to a generation shaped by the contradictions of that system. A childhood framed by order and ideology was followed by the growing tensions and shortages that marked its final years. By the time he reached adulthood, the atmosphere of frustration and resistance that culminated in the Romanian Revolution of 1989 formed the political horizon against which he began to imagine a different future, both for himself and for the cultural landscape around him. In the shifting terrain of Romania’s art scene, Comănescu emerged from the sudden openness and uncertainty, capturing the restless energy of a generation confronting both freedom and instability.
Expanding on painting, crossing boundaries into installation and object-based work, his practice today is guided by a persistent search for density alongside a parallel desire for escape. In the following conversation, Comănescu reflects on the formative conditions of his life and work, tracing how personal memory, political history, and material experimentation converge within his evolving artistic language.
You can read our piece on the emerging scene in Romania from Issue 01.
Charles Moore: Tell me about this installation we’re in at your studio.
Nicolae Comănescu: First is the volume of color. Second is the history of each object. And after that, I put another layer with the drawing. Also, here, you can't see the wooden structure, but little by little, I started to use objects of furniture from my house, always around the house, or from my friend's house. And little by little, I have another part, which is not neutral. They act like something full of information from other places. Also, some of them are like this because I like the sensation of a window. You have many windows here.
In many cases, even if you can't see the formalism of the image, the realities are between realities when I abstract the drawing. Still, somehow you feel a perspective, a visual perspective. And many of them act like a perspective or like a window in this closed space. So here, it's a possibility to escape. Here, I try to find a possibility to escape. Also, I like this kind of virtuality—the possibility to take your path to some liberty or to escape.
And also, I use as many layers as I can. And also, I have other stories in the drawings. Some of the drawings are erotic, some are views from the streets with demonstrations and battles. Demonstrations, people... here it's a battle, there it's an erotic scene. It's not obvious at first sight. I'm not necessarily interested in the actual reality of the drawing. I use the energy, and I think they are the same—the erotic and the battle from the streets. It's somehow the same tension that I want to use. And this is my [process]. I try to manage to escape little by little. This is how I stay here sometimes. And also, I like to use all the others... Yeah, it's possible to disappear here.
Charles: And tell me about where you grew up. What was it like growing up there?
Nicolae: I grew up in a small industrial communist city near Bucharest, where the cars [Dacia] are made, in [Pitești], 125 kilometers west of Bucharest. And it was a very happy childhood in the new, established, small communist [town]. My father was a chief engineer and my mother an economist. And my father was a good mind, a brilliant mind in mathematics and physics. And he was a brilliant engineer. So we stayed at—we had our own house. It was a house, not an apartment, with chickens, cats, dogs, everything, with 1,000 square meters for a city. A huge garden. And also near the center of Pitești. It was somehow the perfect position in communist Romania. And I didn't know I was happy, but I was happy. Also, my mother is from a little village in the south of Giurgiu County. In the summer holidays, I was in the countryside, at my grandmother's house. When school began, I was in Pitești at my parents' house. Everywhere I had huge collections of chickens, cats, and friends. Also, I am from the generation of the 1960s. Between 1968 and 1971, Nicolae [Ceaușescu] made a decree, where he prohibited the possibility to interrupt the... I don't know the word in English for when you stop a pregnancy.
Charles: To stop a pregnancy.
Nicolae: Yeah, and it was prohibited to interrupt this. And we are a generation from that decree. The name was Decretul. We are the children of that decree. And the young guys from the army who shot [the dictator] in the revolution were from my generation, were from his decree.
Charles: Oh, wow. It's almost like the circle of life. So you're saying that in that decree, you could only have one child, or you were supposed to have zero children?
Nicolae: No. It was forbidden to interrupt having babies. You were forced to have babies.
Charles: Oh, you were forced to have babies.
Nicolae: Everybody was forced. It was forbidden to have an abortion.
Charles: Ah, okay.
Nicolae: And you went to jail. The woman, the doctor, and everybody who knew and who performed the abortion were sent to jail, like for a crime, for 25 years at least. Everybody. And this was the reason that tens of thousands of women had illegal abortions. And we had something like 20,000 dead women. Because of [sepsis] and so on. And it was a huge underground industry, because they also tried to cut the distribution in the socialist commerce. They cut the distribution of condoms. Everything. Pills, we never had pills in communist times. Maybe the wives of Securitate members and Generals, maybe, but I'm not sure. And it was a huge generation.
Charles: So you had an explosion in your population.
Nicolae: Yeah. I was born in 1968. I am in the first wave of the decree. And we never had enough space in the schools, in the high schools, in the art, in the academies, in the faculty—everywhere. We never had enough space. In every class, we had something like 35. We were 35 at least. And also in the countryside. Now we have a huge number of villages with the schools closed because they don't have children. And I was in this generation. I was the generation made for communism and for a socialist industry.
Charles: What do you think was the major [difference]? Because communism existed in many places around the world. What was the difference in Romania?
Nicolae: It was a difference. Yeah.
Charles: Compared to other countries, what was different?
Nicolae: It was a harder dictatorship, also, because, I don't know, there are many reasons and many theories. We Romanians, we are not sure why, but there were many, many factors. In the beginning, we were very pro-West oriented and democratic during the first time of Ceaușescu. Because for the first time, the Russians, the Soviets, put the communists here. And in Romania, we didn't have a communist party, or we had something like 200 guys who were planted here from Moscow, like international communists. But they acted like Romanian communists. I should say this because it’s a war. And in Germany, there was a huge communist party. In 1920 something, they had a huge communist tradition. Let's say in Greece, there was a civil war. They had a huge communist party. In Italy, they had a huge communist, socialist, standard movement. Everything on the left, you name it, we had it. So this is the reason the Soviets were here with the tanks; the first communists were people without ideology.
From clever guys who wanted to live more easily. And guys who observed new times were arriving. And the first wave of communism was made by Soviet commissars who implemented here a Soviet and internationalist communism. Every time they turned around, we developed a nationalistic communism. And every time our communists from our structures managed somehow to kill or to make disappear all the internationalized communists, and they tricked—they managed somehow to trick also the Soviets, to make, to disappear or to put in a bad position, in a bad light, the Soviet communists put here to rule. They managed somehow to make them dizzy and to make [them] disappear or kill or something. Every time the internationalist communist or socialist turned out to be a nationalistic patriotic socialist. So in the beginning, Ceaușescu acted like a democratic guy, somehow. He was against the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia.
It was, I don't remember, '68 or something, '67. And he was talking on the TV against the Soviet intervention and for the real independence of each communist country, and blah, blah, blah, blah. This was the time when everybody started to look at him and sympathize with him. This was his time. And he was also a guy from the countryside who had genuine intelligence. He was also very intelligent and charismatic, and knew how to manipulate at first. And also, he was sympathized with by the Western part because he acted like an independent [leader]. So for the first time, we were the first communist country to receive money from the International Monetary Fund, from a capitalist source. We took the money with interest to build socialism.
And we didn't want to take [Soviet money]. We wanted to make our socialism with dollars. And it was his idea, and it was very nice. And also the guys from the West said they would help him to make socialism if he wanted. And also, it was the first time Nixon was in a socialist country; it was in Romania with Ceaușescu. Ceaușescu was with the Queen [Elizabeth II] in London. Ceaușescu was everywhere. [Western] leaders came here, many, many Western presidents, and also he gave them something like a bribe. He invited them to hunt bears. It is very rare in the Western world to have bears with a high population. Maybe, you know. We still have thousands now. And they put it like a farm. They helped to reproduce as many as we could to have bears for high-level hunting. So, in the beginning, he was a nice guy.
And so, he was a nice guy. And he started to build socialism with money from the West, but his mind was from the countryside. He didn't like to be in debt. He didn't understand the capitalist way of things—that it's good to be in debt, it is good to make your business, to take money with interest to make [profit]. And also the old peasant from the countryside mind didn't understand, and also a socialist point of view was not capable of using this wave of sympathy. So he started to build the industry everywhere. In Pitești was a huge oil refinery, a huge, huge, huge. It was, I don't know. We had six lines of buses inside this oil refinery.
And it was made with the oil from the Iranian Shah with American and Japanese capital. And one of the reasons the Soviets sponsored the Islamic Revolution against the Shah was also this. So, he built the industry everywhere. Cars—Dacia—oil refinery, I don't know, you name it. Everything. Ships, modern agriculture with water distribution, with everything. Schools—everybody, 100% of the population went to school. I was in the 70s in communist Romania. I was learning two languages, English and Spanish. Not only one, and not Russian. We didn't learn Russian. My father learned Russian. I learned English and Spanish in communist Romania. It was very cool for those years. Because our brothers, the Cubans, were very interested in doing business with Romania, among others. We had Havana Club everywhere. The rum Havana Club. The cigars. Everything, everywhere, is very cheap and very good.
And in the beginning, he started to build everything, but it was not possible to build it right. Our cars were not very good. Our ships were... everything we did, we managed to sell only because we made it cheaper. And we sold our cars in Brazil and Indonesia. It was good markets, but only in the Third World. And it was good. It was tractors, combines, everything. And in the second part, Ceaușescu tried to pay the debt with huge fury. And also, he became old. And also, he was on a visit, a comrade visit, to North Korea. There, something clicked in his mind, something switched in his mind.
Charles: After the visit to North Korea?
Nicolae: Yeah. When he saw the huge demonstrations. I don't know who was [visiting with him], I don't know. And he held a huge reception. Also, Ceaușescu mediated the first meetings between Nixon's America and China's rulers, against the Russians. The beginning of a friendship between American President Nixon and China was mediated through Ceaușescu. And also, in a part of the communist world, he was also very well received because not everybody liked the Russians. So, he built this image. It was not real, because we were afraid of the Russians. And we did what they said. But nobody knew. Everybody thought we were independent. So, he was very loved in North Korea, because we were also a small country that managed somehow to make economic miracles. After all, this was the image. We have hundreds of factories full of tractors, full of oil, full of everything, iron, fabric, you name it. The level of mathematics was huge. Also, we now had thousands of very good hackers in the ruins of this mathematics school.
Charles: And what age were you when you started to make art?
Nicolae: So in the second half of Ceaușescu's time, things started to become bad. Everything—the oil, the gas, the electricity, everything, the objects, the meat, eggs. And everything was sold to make dollars to pay the debts. We started to not have food. We started to not have heating in the blocks. Hot water was a miracle. And in my half of childhood and the start of adolescence, the general situation was bad. And I grew up, when I was in high school from 14 to 18 years, I grew up in an atmosphere of future resistance against communism. All the guys from my generation hated communism. I was 16 when I started to grow up faster. And I remember, the milk was never enough for me. And I remember the huge queues when we went at four in the morning to take a place in the huge queue to take one bottle, because we had limits, rationing. And also in my family, the tradition was for boys to study mathematics and physics. Everybody.
Everybody was an engineer. My cousins, my father, my uncles, everybody. And the women were economists, bookkeepers, or something. My mother was a bookkeeper in the CEC Bank. And even though we had a good situation, we started to not have food. We started to not have everything. We started to suffer and to procure food from the countryside. It was illegal, but we did it. I did many things illegally. Also, my grandfather from the countryside, when I was very little, would wake me every night to teach me how to make țuică (plum brandy). And it was necessary to make țuică. So when I was eight years old, I illegally made alcohol in communist Romania.
When I was in the countryside or in Pitești, I was trained rigorously to learn mathematics and the things to be number one in school. And when I was in first class, we had artistic high schools. But when I was 14, 15, in Argeș County, the art high schools were closed. Because the country didn't need so many artists, but it needed many engineers. So I was in the best mathematics and physics high school in Argeș County. We had a very tough level of exams. I went to the best high school in the city and county. But in parallel, I started to draw. I always liked to draw; I started when I was three years old. In the other studio, I can show you that I have two sculptures from when I was eight years old. They played Indians. And I was the high priest of [the tribe]. And I made icons to pray.
Charles: So, did you end up going to art school?
Nicolae: Nobody was thinking of me going to art school, and for me, it was an impossible thought. In the last years of Ceaușescu, I was starting to think about it. We had something like [popular/community art school], parallel to the system, like for a hobby. With guys from 16 years to 60. Retired people who were going to study classical drawing and painting.
Charles: But for fun?
Nicolae: For fun. But it was very good and cheap and free. I must admit it was a good system. And they had everything. So I went to the mathematics class every day, and every evening went to this hobby school to start learning to draw. I was thinking of going to art school, but there were only 10 places in the whole country, in all of Romania. It was impossible without connections. And even with connections, you still had to be very good and pay a bribe. I was not very good. I didn't have connections. And my father didn't think to pay. It was a huge bribe. Something like 70,000 lei (Romanian currency) was the bribe. And it was the price of a small apartment. The plan was to be an engineer who painted someday.
Charles: And when did you become a serious artist and have your first exhibition?
Nicolae: I was in the army. It was a long army service, one year and four months. I was in the army when the revolution began. And I think I shot in the direction of some terrorists. When I started to think that it was time, it was like something in my brain was coming from the skies. For the first time in my life, I felt I had to make a decision for my life. And I decided to try the art field. The army was over. The post-communist era began, and I headed to Bucharest in 1991 to take the exam for art school. The score was from zero to 10. I got zero in painting, color, and drawing. I stayed one year somehow here, in friends' houses and everywhere, and I went to what we called [preparatory classes] with a teacher/master.
Charles: Like an apprentice?
Nicolae: Yeah. And I started to learn. I failed in 1990. In 1991, I entered with a 10. And I started school. In the last two years of school, I started to think about the real problem: what I would do after school ended. And I started to talk with friends to make a group. We made the Roasta Pasta group. Roasta Pasta is a plant. I started this group with Gorzo. We were all friends. And we did the first group of young people after [the revolution], Roasta Pasta. Roasta Pasta is a very nice plant. It's very powerful and dangerous. It's like a poison. But if you have liver cancer and take Roasta Pasta, you live. If you are healthy and take Roasta Pasta, you die. My grandmother from the countryside, who was a real medicine woman, had [herbal] remedies. She saved many people from certain death with plants. One of her favorite plants was Roasta Pasta.
And she had a word, "If you have an illness, a specific illness, the specific plant for your illness will start to grow in your yard. So if you will die, you will die because you are stupid, not because you are ill." This was her theory. So our theory was: we are the Roasta Pasta group. The cultural illness of Romania can be cured, and if the culture dies, it will be because of stupidity, because we are here, and you can use us. I'll actually show you a catalog.
Charles: And who was in this group, so it's you and Gorzo?
Nicolae: Seven members.
Charles: And are they all still artists?
Nicolae: Yeah. Many of them. And Florin [Flueras] and [Mircea Nicolae], now they are a small group, they act like a duo, and they are in huge galleries in New York and Berlin. [Another member]. Angela Bontaș didn't manage to make a good impression after Roasta Pasta. It's very hard for women to be artists, to have children, to make money for the children, to make money for the studio, and so on. It's impossible, near impossible. She teaches art in a private school. Angela Bontaș. Alina Penza. She's working in movie production. And Alina Buga did something artistic in [East] Germany. She did something, I don't know.
Charles: Fantastic.
Nicolae: There were several of us. This group was active for two to three years. The rule was: it doesn't matter what you paint, you must make an exhibition every three months with very ugly, aggressive, ironic, and stupid pictures. History was repeating, somewhat like the Cobra movement. Cobra in '48 or something. After the Nazi fall. It was poverty. It was a new era. The beginning of Pop Art, and so on. I told a critic in Düsseldorf about us. I showed him everything. And he told me he knew about Cobra, but not so much. We learned about Cobra in the history of art lessons. But he showed me many works from Cobra, and somehow we are like Cobra, something like between Cobra and German Neo-Expressionism, and those crazy guys. And we were very aggressive and crazy. I started to use [provocative language] in painting. The first time in Romanian painting, a word with 'F.' And it was my diploma work. The end of art school was [a chaotic show] for a cute butterfly. It was a butterfly that made every category of people angry.
So we started with the first exhibitions after school. In the same year, in the same month we finished school, we started with the exhibitions. Very quickly, all the critics observed us from 1997 to 1999. And we started to work. We started to learn. We started to be invited to exhibitions. We were in Switzerland, in New York; we made an exhibition at the Romanian Cultural Center in New York. The high point was in New York, when we saw the real industry of art. And then I think the crisis in our group began because we saw the reality. We were a reaction to the Romanian reality of 1997. But when we saw the real level of international art, we saw that our reaction was not enough. And we must evolve. Everybody started to evolve differently. And the group split. Also, because we worked so hard and we stayed together, we had nothing else. We worked continuously, and we started to hate each other. It was very dense. And finally, we split. Until this day, Florian [Flueras] and Mircea Nicolae don't talk with us. The group was good; we did what we meant to do.
Charles: And tell me about your process for making a work, let's say, from idea to a finished work of art.
Nicolae: My general idea [has been the same] for many 20 years. It has continuously evolved. People say I have many styles of painting and creating objects. But after many years, you can observe that everything is working, it's moving in circles, because I always use the density of information. I always use the search to escape. I always use the necessity to explode in a vacuum direction and to nourish with as much quantity as you can. But on the surface, I have many ways of saying that. For instance, now I wear clothes. In 2007, I had a period when I painted with dust; I should show you every period. The dust from Bucharest is full of information. It's the expression of corruption in politics. The dust is politics in Bucharest. Because many firms pay bribes to the city administration for construction work to change the pipes, the trash, everything. Sometimes the level of dust is higher than usual. And I started to paint with this dust. I collect the dust, I collect the ash. Now, I have a studio in a very central and fancy—well, not fancy, but in the fancy area. I live in [Balta Albă].
It's a communist neighborhood somewhere near Bulgaria. I live in [Balta Albă]. It's the Bucharest corner near Bulgaria. It's in the Southern part of Bucharest. I had some paintings with paysages, with communist paysages. You could see terrace after terrace after terrace. And the feeling was that you were in the corner of the seaside. I have a painting with a guy who stands on the terrace and looks into infinity. It was like the painting of German Romantic [painter Caspar David Friedrich] from the terraces of chalk—I don't remember the name, I shall send it to you. So, there in my neighborhood, we have gangs who make... we had, now it's more civilized, but until recently, we had gangs who made barbecues between blocks with meat. I went to them and asked them to give me the ash. And I took the ash, and I mixed it with the transparent acrylic.
I had brown, black, and white [pigment] from the ash. I used three tones. And you can make any painting you want with transparent acrylic, like a stained-glass technique. Layer after layer, after layer. I used dust full of information, significance, and meaning. I wear clothes. Also, in the other studio, I had a photograph with a drawing. I use photography to draw as a layer, as a base for my drawing, or for future painting. And also, this is from this kind of panel, which is from house furniture. So every time, from 20 years ago until now, I use something that has its own information. It's not just a base structure. It's somebody's furniture with a history, where I start to put another layer of clothes, and I start to put another layer of drawing. Now this one, I like it too much. And I don't know where to put the layer.
Charles: Color feels very important to you.
Nicolae: Yeah. I have always been full of color.
Charles: How do you see color, and how do you transmit what you see into your work?
Nicolae: I don't transmit anything. I need the density of color. I need. It's never enough. When I go to the paint store, they don't have enough colors there. And also, I have a natural ability to use colors. It's very easy for me. Also, this is another reason I wear this kind of clothes, because this is something more than a simple color.
Charles: Because as the colors age, so does the density of it?
Nicolae: It's a density. It's a material with color. It's not a superficial layer of color like in a painting. I like volume, and everything is colored in depth. And also the light, when it's returning to me, it's returning in many ways with the same tone. So this is one reason, but also I like to use, for instance, I had some sheets of fabric, like painting, but without wood, only the fabric. And I have friends who own bars or restaurants. I go there and ask for their help. We put on the tables these layers—I don't know in English, when you put on the table in the restaurant, the tablecloths.
Charles: Oh, tablecloths. Yes.
Nicolae: And we use it like tablecloths. When the people go to the table, the waiter puts the painting like nothing happened. Like it's normal. Put the ashtray, the menu, the beers, and everything. And I didn't want to test the reaction. Even though we had reactions and we used them, this is something. And the paintings were accompanied by demonstrations on the fabric.
In many cases, I worked on the paintings from my photos, which I took at some demonstrations. And the people from the specific restaurants were in those demonstrations. And I put it like a tablecloth. In my opinion, all the huge movements and all the huge meaning of every wave of history will finally become something like background noise, or something like a decoration, something. Like [Che Guevara] on the T-shirts of the young. For them, he's somebody good.
Charles: Right. And they weren't even alive when he was alive.
Nicolae: And they didn't know how many aspects of his name exist. Some communist guys say he was a hero. Other guys say he was a criminal. A huge criminal.
Charles: This is the same today as it was with Ceaușescu in Romania?
Nicolae: Yeah. Also, Ceaușescu led the revolution. Some Romanians say about the revolution, "It was a revolution." Others say it was a [coup d'état]. Others [say something else].
Charles: And some people think the times were better when Ceaușescu was around.
Nicolae: Yeah. It was not better.
Charles: Even at the end. How do you see, when you think about complex ideas, how you see fitting protests and eroticism in the same room? Like, for example, in this installation.
Nicolae: It is something like a clash between complementary things. It is a clash. It is a tension every time. It is something that can transform into death, but it is not transforming into death. And it is like a liberation of energies. And also whether it is a good demonstration or a bad one, I don't know. It is a manifestation of liberty, somehow, or a desire for liberty. But in that moment of the revolution, or the huge demonstration, it's a small moment of liberty. After and before it is not liberty, but this is the need to touch this small moment of something. Also in erotic activity, you have a tension of a small moment of desperation, followed by catharsis. The light is coming, but everything before and after is full of tension, every kind of tension, from social to any tension.
Charles: Because, depending on the viewer, you might be able to find sexiness in protests and tension in eroticism.
Nicolae: Yeah. And it is. It's clear. And also it's about hope. You are full of thinking of—it's not a real thinking—a sensation that the liberation will come, but it will not come, but you are sure it will come.
Charles: In your opinion, what has been the most influential book you've ever read? Or writer, or inspirational writer, or book?
Nicolae: I had different times. I had a period with Faulkner. I had a period with French existentialists, but my favorite is Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Journey to the End of the Night or something. I read it in Romania. For me, it was the first time I saw the pure energy and the anger. It can be transformed into a work of art. A pure and beautiful art with very, very ugly words. And a rough rhythm of hate. And with not pleasant sentiments, you can build a huge literary construction, which is very beautiful. And also, if something in the literary field is the base of my formation, I think Céline is it.
Charles: And do you have a title for this installation?
Nicolae: Yeah.
Charles: And finally, let's talk. Walk me through this installation one more time. Oh, this is it?
Nicolae: Yeah. Is it in English?
Charles: Yeah. Oh, fantastic.
Nicolae: And looking at the big picture from the inside. This is the magazine Dilema Veche. She had a small magazine.
Charles: Yes.
Nicolae: And everything started with a discussion with her. I had an exhibition in SAC Space with some of my works. The exhibition was over. I took it here. And from the discussion with the curator, I started to build this box. So first, we can also go to see the real studio, my studio, which is now a warehouse. So if you want, this is when I was eight years old.
Charles: You made this?
Nicolae: I made this. I was three times higher than this, and it's everywhere. I was recently in my mother's house. I found it in the yard, in the back of the yard, full of plants. Everywhere. So the Indians were praying in front of this.
Charles: Awesome.
Nicolae: My friend says, "You have talent."
