For over two decades, Mihai Teodor Olteanu has been regarded as the painter of the Revolution. Exalted in a world of the apathetics and enthusiastic when others delve into suspicion, he paints and lives to carry forward the ideals of the slain youth and their parents—whose loss defies healing through the trivialization of the meanings behind the overthrow of dictatorship, won at the heavy cost of blood. The Timișoara Revolution endowed the painter with the strength of freedom of expression and action. His painting is dedicated to the civic sphere and charitable deeds, serving as an ongoing tribute to the martyrs of the revolution, forgotten by its beneficiaries and, all the more so, by those who usurped it.
An alumnus of the Institute of Fine Arts in Cluj—where he studied under Aurel Ciupe, Teodor Botiș, and Mircea Crișan—and a friend of Horia Bernea, with whom he shared a love for God and nature, church banners, the garden column, and the theme of the Garden of the Mother of God, he is an artist of overflowing talent. In his canvases, art lovers rediscover the light and palette of the Balchik School, the glazes of Romanian ceramics, the spiral of drawing, and a visually seductive neo-Impressionism that plunges the viewer into reverie and introspection.
The artist is equally renowned for welcoming Their Majesties King Michael and Queen Anne to Timișoara, when the city’s mayor, Gheorghe Ciuhandu, gave him carte blanche to greet the Sovereign. The painter orchestrated a procession of ten horsemen—five mounted on white horses and five on dark horses—and presented the King with a portrait and an icon at the entrance to Ghiroda, a few kilometers from the airport where they were received.
Painting enthusiasts are continually moved by the fervor of his faith, a generous innocence, and a soul inhabited by a biography shaped, much like his artistic maturity, by exemplary milestones. By his own account, his father—imprisoned in the communist dungeons between 1956 and 1964—possessed a rare talent for fine script: the gift of calligraphy, which he practiced in detention by copying poetry onto the wooden soles of shoes.
He has painted icons from an early age, inspired by the frescoes of the church where he went with his mother to pray for his father’s release. This hieratic quality endures throughout his entire oeuvre, marked across every theme, composition, and season by a profound beatitude and the omnipresence of the Philokalic spirit. One has the distinct sense of encountering a painter who appears to pray as he paints, for whom painting is a form of prayer. He reminds us, with a rare resonance, that the world is one and singular for all, and that Love and Art will invariably triumph.
Exhibitions in the Netherlands, hosted at the Amsterdam City Hall, and at the Museum of the Basilica of Notre-Dame in Lyon remain, to this day, among the artist’s most cherished memories. Mihai Teodor Olteanu speaks more frequently of the soul than of colors and painterly techniques. For him, the painting is a state of being, an offering brought to God. He has held dozens of exhibitions, many organized to raise funds for charitable causes or for the restoration and acquisition of musical instruments.
Out of a Longing for Vincent van Gogh
Mihai Teodor Olteanu has held numerous exhibitions in recent years, both nationwide and internationally, and his works reside in numerous private collections. Recently, the painter was invited to exhibit in New York, and a few days ago, at the 35th Congress of the Romanian-American Academy, he received invitations for exhibitions in Bari and Toronto.
In 1992, while in Amsterdam to exhibit a portrait of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, the painter gifted the artwork to her, even though representatives of the Royal House had arrived to acquire it. Two additional portraits of members of European royal houses, as well as a portrait of the Emperor of Japan, were created by the artist and now reside within their respective collections.
Grigorescu, Luchian, and Andreescu are the masters he first discovered as a child in the museums of Transylvania, while admiring the paintings of Rembrandt and El Greco in monographs. Art books dedicated to the Impressionists populate his studio, and on occasion, an entire exhibition is dedicated to a specific painter, yet his works never resort to mere pastiche.
In the galleries of Timișoara, the exhibition entitled “Longing for Vincent” stood as a clear testament to his profound admiration for the painting of Vincent van Gogh. Mihai Teodor Olteanu finds a kindred spirit in the great Dutch master not only through a shared draw to sunflowers and natural light, but equally through an intense emotionality and profound sensitivity. What distinguishes them, however, is their worldly “success”: Van Gogh sold but a single canvas during his lifetime, whereas Olteanu is sought out by collectors from across the globe.
Painting as a Jacob’s Ladder
I had the distinct joy of launching my latest book, The Lions’ Staircase, in the city of Lugoj as well—a true cradle of culture, thanks to the tireless efforts of Henrieta Szabo and her team. The sun-drenched gallery, with its sweeping street-facing windows, hosted both my gathering with readers and the exhibition of Timișoara-born painter Mihai Teodor Olteanu, entitled “The Stairway to Heaven”.
This marked my first direct encounter with the canvases of this artist, widely known as the Painter of the Revolution. In the opening days of Timișoara’s hard-won freedom, Olteanu painted an iconostasis before the Cathedral—an open-air altar raised as an homage to God for turning His gaze once more toward the Romanian people, and a steadfast testimony that our faith had not been lost despite decades of enforced atheism under the communist regime.
The Timișoara Revolution—an event the artist fiercely defends from any shadow of doubt—left an indelible mark upon both his life and his oeuvre. His subsequent canvases retain a sanguinary expanse, the heavy oils applied with a palette knife appearing to bear the stigmata of a steadfast belief in liberty.
Each painting serves as a window unto a realm radiant with light, passion, and spirituality. In his work, innate talent intertwines with profound faith, transforming color itself into a prayer.
Doina Uricariu
New York
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