In her works, Diana Cepleanu (*1957 Bucharest, Romania) processes impressions from her surroundings, reflecting on her subjets from a personal and intimate perspective. Cepleanu is by choice a discrete presence in the Romanian art scene. Yet, her paintings are powerful and convey a sense of timelesness that connects her with artists of her generation such as Ioana Batranu, although they have very different approaches. Whether she is painting the portraits of her children, her self-portraits or elements from nature, Cepleanu acts with a sharp sense of observation, revealing the essence of people and things that surround her: from onions and cabbages, wild flowers or trees in her favourite corner of a Bucharest park to an empty plastic bag shaped by the wind.
“I never really thought about the subject. Little by little, I began to see that you can truly find what there is to paint in anything. At first I searched for exceptional things. But after a while I started turning inward more and more, and searching for the thing that was taking shape there. Of course there is always a tension, because even though you are in love with color, with shapes, with the abstract side, the figuration always comes in and charms you. No, you can’t give up figuration and, just like that, you find yourself in this terrible tension.
After I painted many portraits, I became very dissatisfied. And then I tried somehow to destroy the portrait, to corrode it, to erase it. I think I succeeded somehow in making it no longer a portrait. But it still comes back on its own. I destroy every figure that wants to impose itself on me.
My eyes are so hungry. I sit here, at the window, and look through the spyglass, and I see a tree and I like it. And I immediately say to myself – what a sketch I would make! And suddenly I see a lot of other things: a chimney, another tree, another chimney. And they all start screaming at me: me too! me too! me too. Just like students who want to answer. This is a hunger of the gaze. The objects want something from me, I don’t know what they want. They, the poor ones, will ask me what I wanted from them.
The frenzy remains. It has a name, I call it painting. In painting I always invent and tell myself that ‘this is painting’ and then it turns out that it is not painting. I mean, painting is like that, a kind of Fata Morgana. I don’t know what it is and I realize that it probably isn’t. We all do this. We seek to say what it is, to feel what it is. Practice is the only thing that interests me. The final object is always an oddity. Once I finish a work, it’s dead. It’s going to live out its afterlife.”
Excerpt from a conversation between Diana Cepleanu and Daria Ghiu, 2026
Find the entire interview here
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Diana Cepleanu
Box with Christmas Ornament, 2024
oil on canvas mounted on cardboard
52 x 43.5 cm
Diana Cepleanu
Box with Christmas Ornament, 2024
oil on canvas mounted on cardboard
52 x 43.5 cm
Diana Cepleanu, Born in1957 in Bucharest, Romania, lives and works in Bucharest.
Selected exhibitions include: Diana Cepleanu, Galeria Plan B, Berlin (2026); Salon, Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore (2026); IT’S NO CRIME TO TICKLE TIME. 20 Years of Plan B, Galeria Plan B, Berlin (2025); Madeleine Moments, Union Pacific, London, (2025); Now, kaufmann repetto, New York (2025); Denonce-Moi, dependance, Brussels (2025); There were times I wanted to change the world, Paltim Timisoara, Timisoara (2025); Reunion, AYE Project Space, Hong Kong (2025); Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley, curated by Daniel Malarkey, Alison Jacques, London (2025); snow falls over car hoods over david’s valley, Lutnita, Chisinau (2024); The Humming of colors, Art Chosun Space, Seoul (2024); autoportret, Plan B, Berlin (2023); Lutnita, Chisinau (2023); Voyage dans la couleur (Journey in Color), Vila Magdalena, Nice (2020); Galeria Anticariat Curtea Veche, Bucharest (solo exhibitions, 2019 and 2014); Predelut 4 – Arcus Cultural Center, Sf. Gheorghe (2019); Pentimento – 5th International Biennial of The Art of Miniature, Ruse (2015); Pictori olteni de ieri şi de azi, Muzeul de Artă, Târgu Jiu (2010); Volare (Fly), Desenzano del Garda (2010); EMOZIONI TRA CIELO E MARE (Emotions between sky and sea), Il Gazebo di Gaeta (2010); I ritrattisti (The Portraitists), Il Borgo Gallery, Milan (2009); Pictori peisagisti în grădina Palatului Cotroceni, Galeria Muzeului National Cotroceni, Bucharest (2007); Pictura ca murmur, Galeria Anticariat Curtea Veche, Bucharest (2007); Chipuri de pictori, Galeriile Artexpo, Bucharest (1996).