Aida Tomescu, Silent Spring 2020, diptych, oil on Belgian linen, 200 x306cm. Showing at the Art Ga...
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 thirty solo shows to date and participated in national and international exhibitions and events including; 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 (updated 2020)
Click on these links below to access interviews and essays:
Aida Tomescu interviewed by Terence Maloon 2012
Deborah Hart, ‘States of Becoming’, Retrospective Essay, ANU Drill Hall Gallery, 2009
Laura Pia, ‘Infinitely Subtle Threads’, Look, March 2009
‘Aida Tomescu on Italian Renaissance Painting’, Museum Magazine, Issue 2 2015
Terence Maloon, Aida Tomescu, Niagara Galleries catalogue essay 4 April 2006
Terence Maloon, Aida Tomescu, Campi Flegrei, Liverpool Street Gallery catalogue essay 18 August 2007
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 imitations that this fluid state of becoming is revealed.”
Deborah Hart, Senior Curator, National Gallery of Australia
Silent Spring
Wynne Exhibition
Art Gallery of New South Wales, 26 September 2020 – 10 January 2021
The heart was a place made fast
February – March 2020
Fox Jensen McCrory , Auckland
View Exhibition
The open wounds of white clouds
7 September – 5 October 2019
FoxJensen, Sydney
View Exhibition
WET WET WET
14 February – 23 March 2019
FOX/JENSEN/McCRORY, Auckland
View Exhibition
Sydney Contemporary 2018
13 -16 September, 2018
FOX/JENSEN & FOX/JENSEN/McCRORY
Booth E16
View Exhibition
‘Under the iron of the moon’
19th October – 9th December 2017
FOXJENSEN, Sydney
View Exhibition
Eyes in the Heat
Aida Tomescu, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney
3-28 November 2015
In the crown of broken April
Sydney Contemporary
Fox Jensen McCrory 1st – 31st of October 2020
Sydney Contemporary 2019
Aida Tomescu,Fox Jensen McCrory Gallery, SYDNEY & AUCKLAND
9-15 SEPTEMBER 2019
Art Basel Hong Kong 2019
Aida Tomescu,Fox Jensen McCrory Gallery, SYDNEY & AUCKLAND
29 – 31 MARCH 2019
Art Basel Hong Kong 2018
Aida Tomescu,Fox Jensen McCrory Gallery, SYDNEY & AUCKLAND
27 – 31 March 2018
Art Basel Hong Kong 2017
Aida Tomescu, JENSEN GALLERY, SYDNEY AND FOX/JENSEN, AUCKLAND
23 – 25 March 2017
Paintings and Drawings
Australian National University Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra
2009
Aida Tomescu, Silent Spring 2020, diptych, oil on Belgian linen, 200 x306cm. Showing at the Art Ga...
Aida Tomescu In The Crown of Broken April 2020 oil on Belgian linen 190 x 306 cm (Diptych)...
John Curtin Gallery celebrates its reopening with exhibition of significant works from the Collectio...
Look Magazine, July-Aug 2020, p66-67...
Sewn onto stones in the sky, 2019 by Aida Tomescu :: The Collection :: Art Gallery NSW https://www.a...
Artonview: the National Gallery of Australia’s quarterly magazine https://nga.gov.au/artonview...
Aida Tomescu, River Red, 183x 153cm, oil on canvas is included in Making Her Mark: Selected Works fr...
Installation views for ‘The heart was a place made fast’, Fox Jensen McCrory , Auckland, can be ...
(featured image is a detail from Aida Tomescu’s Violet with Candles, 2020)...
Click here to watch the video....
Footage of the exhibition Under the Iron of the Moon, FOXJENSEN Sydney. Video by Barry Nichols...
This is a longer version of episode 33 of the Talking with Painters podcast (talkingwithpainters.com...
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