The curated presentation here spans almost thirty years of Florin Mitroi’s considerable production, examining the artist’s recurrent motifs: landscapes, portraits, erotic drawings, and zinc cut-outs. His oeuvre is predominantly characterized by series of stylized portraits, usually renditions of head and torso, depicting individuals with strong black brush strokes in rigid positions. Other aspects of his work comprise small stylized landscape paintings, ink drawings on paper – mostly erotic studies with a mythological underline – as well as symbolic and figurative zinc plates produced in the last years of his life. Mitroi was an intriguing figure in the Romanian art scene. He was a passionate teacher, having taught at Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of Fine Arts in Bucharest for more than 30 years, but a reserved individual. His role in the arts school was well known by the local scene, but few knew of his art too. He had only one solo exhibition during his lifetime, in 1993 in Bucharest. Only after his death and the discovery of numerous works in his studio did his prolific production became apparent, with more than 8,000 graphic works, drawings, engravings, paintings, and carved objects in metal.

Florin Mitroi's (born 1938 in Craiova, Romania) work has been exhibited at Espace Niemeyer, Paris (2019), MARe – Muzeul de Artă Recentă, Bucharest (2018), Craiova Art Museum, Craiova (2018), the Contemporary Art Gallery of Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu (2008) and Catacomba Gallery, Bucharest (1993), among others. He lived and worked in Bucharest until his death in 2002.