I do not know who I am, but in all my beautiful dreams, since childhood, I dreamed of being a painter.
I do not know who I am, but in all my beautiful dreams, since childhood, I dreamed of being a painter.
And today my best dreams and my greatest desires are the same, namely, to become a painter.
I’ll never dream of something more beautiful.
I was born in Ludus (Middle Transylvania) on August 13, 1953. My father, a shuffle of movement, had a handwriting so beautiful that the writing machines of the age could have learned much from him. His talent for drawing and especially for writing has been demonstrated from 1956 to 1964, in the Communist prisons, where he copied poetries on the shoes’ wood soles.
My first encounter with painting and with the image of God came early; I was about three years old when I went to my church with my grandmother to ask God to bring my father back. In those years I filled my eyes and my soul with the painted icons on the walls of the church on the hill, where I also had painted some when I was six years old. Soon, when I was almost nine, I visited the Ardeal Art Museum: in Cluj, the masters of the Romanian painting: Grigorescu, Luchian, Andreescu – in Sibiu, the world’s people: Rembrandt, El Greco. Andreescu gave me the melancholy, El Greco the dream of exaltation, to defeat sin through Art and Love, the dream of deliverance. Both of them have always remained in my heart as the masters of Eternity. When I was able to understand them, I became a painter. The years of the general school and those of the “Ion Andreescu” Institute of Art merged as sunflowers at the end of summer, leaving instead golden and young petals, the rust of the harvested wheat, the brandy mounds like the immortal pyramids of the windy autumn and melancholic. Because the colors of autumn have always fascinated me, its nuances gave me the feeling of fulfilling the calm, quiet silence, without strides or groans, but also the fear of not going too fast, of not cutting me off the branch before the harvest.
Everything burned in me then: joy and sorrow, sadness and happiness. It all lasted for a second or eternity. The time of my first white shirt came when I entered society, fearful, excited, and happy as a disciple who wanted to be a master. It happened in 1973 at the gallery of the Cluj Institute of Medicine, my first individual painting exhibition. After that, my exhibitions continued as autumn rain follows another and the sun between two showers of rain filled my studio with paintings and pushed me to find a place for them in the souls and houses of the people for whom they were painted. They were no longer just simple objects, but pieces burnt from my soul, born to be worn in the soul. I understood the secret of these words: “Because You are the Only One who offers and offers Himself, Jesus Christ our God.”
It was December 1989 and I was in Timisoara. Our city reminded El Greco’s dream and counsel that God descended in the midst of the city and the people, saving us. Unfortunately, He took the most innocent, fearful of Him, the free ones to fly to Eternity. We remember them every December, and their martyrdom was not in vain.
At the beginning of January 1990, I painted immense paintings on canvas and wood in front of the Cathedral, on the tracks of tanks and young bodies crushed, and those paintings remained there for months, not only mine. It was the altar of those forgiven for liberty, those who left us too fast. Together with a group of writers and poets, we founded ” Timisoara”, the first free newspaper in the city, a symbol of hope and salvation. It was the decade when I left the country for the first time when I visited the museums of the world and exhibited in many halls and museums: Amsterdam (1992 – City Hall), Lyon (1994 – Notre Dame Basilica Museum). These were the first exhibitions when I had a feeling that the world is one for all, that Love and Art will always triumph.
Mihai Teodor Olteanu
Style and Themes in the Painting of Mihai Teodor Olteanu
Mihai Teodor Olteanu is a contemporary Romanian painter known for vibrant works steeped in spiritual symbolism. His style blends elements of Expressionism and Symbolism, often incorporating reinterpreted sacred motifs. Recurring themes include angels, dreamlike landscapes, flowers, and scenes inspired by spirituality—each filtered through the artist’s personal vision. The paintings read like odysseys of self-searching and true faith: every canvas balances inner quiet with storms of feeling that culminate in an explosion of divine message addressed to the viewer.
From childhood, the painter was captivated by church icons and the great masters—Grigorescu, Luchian, Andreescu, Rembrandt, El Greco—who instilled both a moving melancholy and “the exalted dream of overcoming sin through Art and Love.” This spiritual foundation runs deep through his oeuvre, where angels and sacred symbols serve as central landmarks. Many exhibitions and series (e.g., The Light of Angels – Divine Gift, Meeting the Angels) place the relationship between art and the sacred in the foreground.
Artistic Technique and Stylistic Traits
Technically, Olteanu works mainly in oil and acrylic on canvas, often in large formats. His paintings impress through color and motion: a vibrant palette, strong contrasts, and bold, energetic brushwork. Color fields are modulated by visible, cascading strokes—at times whirlwinds of form and color reminiscent of Van Gogh’s emotional intensity. This gestural dynamism lends the works a vivid, almost turbulent presence, suggesting the effervescence of feelings poured onto the canvas. Critics describe his paintings as “illuminated, vital, with a cascade of strokes, swirls, and echoes,” highlighting color harmonies that proclaim spiritual ascent. The artist says he paints “as if breathing,” at an alert rhythm, as though trying to embrace the entire surge of emotions coursing through him.
A telling example is the angels series. These large canvases (around 60 × 240 cm each) render angelic silhouettes in a free, expressionist manner. Intense, radiant colors and vigorous brushwork suggest the grace and power of these ethereal beings. He often adds fine details and decorative elements inspired by sacred art (halos, stylized floral motifs, golden light), yet integrated into a modern composition. This dialogue between figurative and abstract defines Olteanu’s style—recognizable forms (angels, flowers, churches, figures) appear wrapped in an oneiric atmosphere born of color and texture. Spirituality is conveyed not only through explicit symbols, but also through the painting’s chromatic and emotional ambiance. Each work invites the viewer to contemplate the mysteries of existence and “the wonders of the divine,” aiming, in the artist’s words, to inspire, challenge, and move the beholder.
In summary, Olteanu’s signature combines:
High color expressiveness – vivid, often daring harmonies to transmit deep inner states;
Dynamic, gestural brushwork – assertive, visible strokes that energize the surface; texture heightens drama and depth;
Figurative–abstract fusion – recognizable motifs distilled into atmospheres where feeling precedes realism;
Spiritual–symbolic thematics – angels, mystical light, flowers emerging from darkness, expressing a creed that painting is a divine gift and a form of communion with the sacred.
This approach makes his works feel less like depictions and more like “burnt pieces of the artist’s soul, born to be carried in the viewer’s own soul.” The art offers a spiritual visual message meant to uplift, continuing the tradition of artists for whom art was inseparable from the search for sacredness and love.
Parallels with Contemporary Artists
While inimitably his own, Olteanu’s orientation toward emotional expressiveness and spiritual themes places him in the company of modern and contemporary artists who also explored abstraction, symbolism, and the sacred.
Wassily Kandinsky — Spiritual Abstraction and “Inner Necessity”
A key forerunner of spiritually minded abstraction, Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) argued that painting should spring from an inner necessity. In Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1910), he claimed forms and colors have spiritual resonances that directly touch the inner life. Similarly, Olteanu sees art as a spiritual act: each painting is an offering to the Infinite of God, created under the protection of a guardian angel.
Stylistically, Kandinsky pushed abstraction toward the elimination of the object; Olteanu, by contrast, keeps a living figurative thread—angels, saints, human figures, birds, flowers—treated freely, nearly abstract, bathed in diffuse horizons of light and color. Both, however, elevate color as the main expressive vehicle. If Kandinsky’s colors “sing” a music of the soul, Olteanu orchestrates a spiritual symphony of light, celebrating, for instance, the sacred joy of life. For both, transcendence through color is the wager.
Marc Chagall — Oneiric Symbolism and Sacred Reinterpretation
Marc Chagall (1887–1985) fused symbolism, folklore, and religious themes into a modern, dreamlike idiom. His angels—a poetic blend of mysticism, memory, and vivid imagination—are rarely orthodox in the strict iconographic sense; they are symbolic presences, woven into the narrative of the work. Likewise, Olteanu’s angels descend in cascades of color, protecting the newborn or celebrating divine light. Both employ radiant colors and free forms to suggest transcendence and miracle.
Chagall often anchors sacred symbols in the folkloric and personal (the village, the fiddler, the flying bride, the community’s angel), whereas Olteanu introduces sacredness more directly—churches in landscape, aureoled angels, nature as temple—within an expressionist-symbolic register. Both believe in art’s power to ennoble the soul: Chagall rooted his art in love; Olteanu proposes a message of love and faith, honoring “eternal light,” “divine gift,” and “reborn hope.”
Mark Rothko — Transcendence Through Color and the Modern Sacred Space
Different in form yet kindred in aim, Mark Rothko (1903–1970) pursued spiritual experience through large fields of color designed to induce inwardness. The Rothko Chapel in Houston epitomizes a modern sacred space. Rothko noted: “People who weep before my paintings have the same religious experience I had when I painted them; if you see only color harmonies, you miss the point.”
Where Rothko eschews iconography and communicates purely through meditative color, Olteanu engages a more narrative, dynamic language—crowded spaces of force lines and contrasts; angels and flowers that “speak” more explicitly to the viewer. Rothko bet on an essentialized sacredness without traditional Christian imagery; Olteanu sublimates Christian iconography (crosses, angels, celestial light) through expressionist means to intensify emotional force. Both aim to elevate the viewer through art: contemplation in Rothko’s silence, and visionary storytelling in Olteanu’s chromatic ardor.
Other relevant names
Georges Rouault (1871–1958) — expressionist painter of profound Catholic conviction; glowing, leaded-glass contours; a lyrical, moral gravity that resonates with Olteanu’s spiritual seriousness.
Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) — at times a mystical Surrealist, reimagining sacred themes (The Last Supper, Christ of Saint John of the Cross) with visionary precision; Olteanu is less academic but shares a will to re-enchant iconography for modern eyes.
Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) — monumental, material-dense canvases, biblical and historical memory; far darker in tone, yet similarly invested in scale, texture, and the weight of the sacred.
Together these lines suggest where Olteanu stands: a distinctly personal synthesis—earnest spiritual fervor rooted in Eastern-European icon culture and gestural freedom akin to Western abstract expressionism. Though grounded in national specifics (Banat rural vistas, Transylvanian churches) and personal experience (e.g., memories of 1989 transfigured in art), his language speaks universally about emotion and faith.
Estimated Prices for Original Works by Mihai Teodor Olteanu
Taking into account the artist’s current standing (solid nationally, growing internationally), recent private valuations of smaller works, and comparable pricing for contemporary European painters working in expressive, spiritual idioms, the following indicative retail ranges are recommended for unique oil/acrylic canvases on stretcher, framed in wood:
| Canvas Size | Estimated Price (EUR) |
|---|---|
| 60 × 60 cm | €800 – €1,200 |
| 80 × 80 cm | €1,200 – €1,600 |
| 100 × 100 cm | €1,800 – €2,400 |
| 150 × 100 cm | €2,000 – €3,000 |
| 200 × 200 cm | €3,000 – €4,000 |
Notes:
Prices vary with subject complexity, significance within the artist’s trajectory, exhibition history, and sales channel (direct vs. auction). Works from emblematic series or with standout frames/collections may command the upper end or higher. Among comparable artists, large expressive/spiritual canvases often trade around €2,000–€5,000 depending on demand and name recognition; within this context, Olteanu’s pricing remains collector-friendly relative to blue-chip names, offering museum-grade one-offs at accessible five-figure-lei / low four-figure-euro levels.
Selected References (print-friendly)
Artist’s official materials: biography, series notes, and “Angels” collection overview.
Critical appraisals highlighting gestural vigor and spiritual ascent; contextual essays on Chagall’s angels and Rothko’s modern sacred space.
Historical notes on Rouault’s symbolic expressionism.