About

Born in Bucharest, Romania in 1955, Aida Tomescu has been living and working in Sydney since 1980. Tomescu studied at the Institute of Arts, Bucharest, was awarded a Diploma of Visual Arts in 1977 and shortly after her arrival to Australia completed a postgraduate degree at the City Art Institute in 1983.

Tomescu has exhibited regularly since 1978; held over forty solo shows to date and participated in national and international exhibitions and events including: Art SG Singapore, Flowers Gallery 2023, ‘The ear in the river and the prayer in the stone’ Fox Jensen Gallery 2022, ‘Folded in Three’ (2022), Flowers Gallery, Art Basel Hong Kong, ‘Unfolding Presence’ Orange Regional Gallery (2021-22), ‘A Long Line of Sand’ (2021) Fox Jensen, Sydney, ‘Know My Name’ (2020-22), National Gallery of Australia, Art Basel Hong Kong (2019, 2018, 2017 & 2015), ‘Permafrost’ (2019), Fox Jensen, Sydney, ‘Wet Wet Wet’ (2019), Fox Jensen McCrory Auckland,  ‘The Anatomy of Gesture’, Fox Jensen McCrory Auckland (2017); ‘Abstraction’, National Gallery of Australia touring exhibition (2017-2018); ‘Chromoffection’, Fox Jensen McCrory Auckland (2016), Art Stage Singapore (2015), ‘The Triumph of Modernism’, TarraWarra Museum of Art (2015); ‘Abstraction: The Heide Collection’, Heide Museum of Modern Art (2015); ‘Vibrant Matter’, TarraWarra Museum of Art (2013), ‘The Mind’s Eye’, Art Gallery of South Australia (2013), ‘Out of Australia: Prints and Drawings’, The British Museum, London (2011), ‘Forever Young’, Heide Museum of Modern Art (2011), and ‘Contemporary Encounters’, Ian Potter Centre: National Gallery of Victoria (2010). In 2009, a major survey exhibition of Tomescu’s works was also held at the Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, Canberra.

 

Aida Tomescu is the winner of the inaugural LFSA Arts 21 Fellowship in 1996 at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne. She is also the winner of the Sulman Prize 1996, the Wynne prize 2001, the Dobell Prize for Drawing 2003, by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

 

Tomescu is represented in major art museums, regional galleries, and university and corporate collections within Australia and internationally including; The National Gallery of Australia, The National Gallery Of Victoria, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, The Art Gallery of South Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand, and the British Museum, London.

 

Download CV as PDF

 

Click on these links below to access interviews and essays:

 

…Aida Tomescu has revived a full-throated painterly abstraction, where colour and gesture flow through the work…she knits over and under surfaces in which the light and colour seem to be pulsing from within the work, not just laid on top. You feel her presence and her sensibility, moment to moment on the surface, in the painting.

 

Patrick McCaughey, Strange Country: Why Australian Painting Matters, 2014

 

“Watching the development of Aida Tomescu’s work over the years has been a thrilling experience…. one of Australia’s leading painters – in any style”

 

John McDonald, ‘Aida Tomescu – Fox Jensen Gallery, Sydney’, Sydney Morning Herald published September 26, 2019

 

My interest has always been to arrive at a unified image with fullness and clarity, to find a reality which affirms its own existence.

There is a silent moment in painting when we experience an absolute, total intelligence in the work through which everything comes together. The logic that develops is stronger than any emotion.  The painting begins to project back and I become aware of another presence; the subtle, vulnerable structure built from paint.    

 

Aida Tomescu, 2015

 

“Like blooms that appear quite startlingly before winter’s end, only to be ravaged by frost and wind and then renewed when the season of their being arrives, Aida Tomescu’s works are in a constant state of becoming. Over the years she has developed her own distinctive, continually evolving visual language, working from one group or ensemble of works to the next. Each series, irrespective of media, is like a new beginning; informed by previous experience and yet restlessly, determinedly eschewing the easy, known path in search of new life.

There is a sense of vitality whether it be in the radiance of the paintings or the persistent searching line in the drawings…It is possible to see the ways in which the drawings become increasingly layered, expansive and informed by colour like the paintings and the ways in which the aspect of drawing has increasingly entered into the paintings.

Ultimately what Tomescu’s art has shown us is that it can never be pinned down to one thing, that it is about open-ended associations, moving between the tangible and intangible. It is perhaps in giving up the need for tangible certainties in favour of more subtle intimations that this fluid state of becoming is revealed.

 

Deborah Hart, Senior Curator, National Gallery of Australia

Represented by Fox Jensen Sydney and Fox Jensen McCrory Auckland.Represented by Flowers Gallery, London and Hong Kong

SELECTED WORKS

EXHIBITIONS

A select number of exhibitions are available for viewing below. Click here to view more exhibitions

‘With the crimson word’

Flowers Gallery, London

4 Oct – 28 October 2023

View Exhibition catalogue

View Exhibition at Flowers gallery

Aida Tomescu The ear in the river and the prayer in the stone

Fox Jensen Gallery, Sydney

4 Nov – 17 December 2022

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View Exhibition at Fox Jensen Gallery

Aida Tomescu Folded in Three

Art Basel Hong Kong 2022

25 -29 May 2022

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Aida Tomescu: Unfolding Presence

Orange Regional Gallery, 03 December 2021 – 23 January 2022

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Installation view of Aida Tomescu, Into a Carpet Made of Water

Into a Carpet Made of Water

Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong, 16 September – 13 November 2021

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View Exhibition at Flowers Gallery website

Aida Tomescu Studio

The heart was a place made fast
February – March 2020
Fox Jensen McCrory , Auckland
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Aida Tomescu 'The open wounds of white clouds' Exhibition

The open wounds of white clouds
7 September – 5 October 2019
FoxJensen, Sydney
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Aida Tomescu, Wet Wet Wet 2019 exhibition at Fox Jensen McCrory, Auckland

WET WET WET
14 February – 23 March 2019
FOX/JENSEN/McCRORY, Auckland
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Aida Tomescu, Sydney Contemporary 2018

Sydney Contemporary 2018
13 -16 September, 2018
FOX/JENSEN & FOX/JENSEN/McCRORY
Booth E16
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Aida Tomescu, In a carpet made of water, in a carpet made of earth I, 2017 oil, silver and gold pigment on Belgian linen, 183 x 91.5cm

Under the iron of the moon
19th October – 9th December 2017
FOXJENSEN, Sydney
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Aida Tomescu, 'Helios', 2015, oil on linen, 183 x 153cm

Eyes in the Heat
Aida Tomescu, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney
3-28 November 2015

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Aida Tomescu, 'Sabine', 2011, mixed media on linen, 183 x 153cm

Milky Way
Melbourne Art Fair ; Liverpool Street Gallery, Melbourne, Sydney

2012

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Aida Tomescu, 'Windhover', 2005, oil on canvas, 184 x 154cm

Aida Tomescu
Niagara Gallery, Melbourne

2006

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Aida Tomescu, 'Tethys', 2010, mixed media on linen, 184 x 154 cm

Eden
Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne; Liverpool Street Gallery, Sydney

2010

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Aida Tomescu, 'Tierkreis 2009' and 'Anemone 2009' oil, pastel and oil pigment on linen 184 x 154 cm

Tuckson/Tomescu

Liverpool Street Gallery, Sydney

2009

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A Long Line of Sand
Fox Jensen McCrory, Alexandria, Sydney
17 June – 24 July & 13 – 30 October 2021

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Aida Tomescu, 'Silent Spring', 2020, oil on Belgian linen, 200 x 306cm (diptych)

Silent Spring
Wynne Exhibition
Art Gallery of New South Wales, 26 September 2020 – 10 January 2021

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Aida Tomescu, 'The open wounds of white clouds', 2019, Oil on linen, 200 x 306cm

Sydney Contemporary 2019
Aida Tomescu,Fox Jensen McCrory Gallery, SYDNEY & AUCKLAND
9-15 SEPTEMBER 2019

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Aida Tomescu, 'Folded into the white of my words', Installation, 2019, Oil on Belgian linen, 190 x 153cm each

Art Basel Hong Kong 2019
Aida Tomescu,Fox Jensen McCrory Gallery, SYDNEY & AUCKLAND
29 – 31 MARCH 2019

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Aida Tomescu, 'ARIETTES OUBLIÉES I & II', 2018

Art Basel Hong Kong 2018
Aida Tomescu,Fox Jensen McCrory Gallery, SYDNEY & AUCKLAND
27 – 31 March 2018

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Aida Tomescu "Under The Iron of the Moon 2017"

Art Basel Hong Kong 2017
Aida Tomescu, JENSEN GALLERY, SYDNEY AND FOX/JENSEN, AUCKLAND
23 – 25 March 2017

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ANU Drill Hall, Aida Tomescu - Paintings and Drawings' Exhibition, 2009

Paintings and Drawings
Australian National University Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra
2009

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Aida Tomescu, Campi Flegrei, 2007

Campi Flegrei
Liverpool Street Gallery

2007

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Aida Tomescu, 'Blue Eye', 2008, oil on linen, 184 x 154cm

Ravel

Niagara Galleries

2008

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Aida Tomescu, 'Aureum', 2013, oil on canvas, 184cm x 154cm

Aida Tomescu

Karen Woodbury 2013

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Aida Tomescu, 'Laverty 2', Newcastle Art Gallery, 14 May - 14 August 2011

Laverty 2

Newcastle Region Art Gallery 2011

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News

Video

CONTACT US

Studio Aida Tomescu, Sydney Australia

Email: studio@aidatomescu.com

 

Aida Tomescu is represented by Fox Jensen Sydney and Fox Jensen McCrory Auckland.

 

Email: gallery@foxjensengallery.com

 

 

Aida Tomescu is represented by Flowers Gallery, London and Hong Kong.

 

Email: jonny@flowersgallery.com