Dragos Raicu - A New Revelation on the Romanian Art Scene

Mastering his technique as no other few can do it worldwide, Dragos Raicu, and I point here_ a self-taught painter, is the new revelation on the Romanian art scene. At the age of 50, the artist found himself ready to reveal his work to the public for the first time, counting on his technique as being his strongest asset.
Dragos Raicu creates work that appears to  have been painted in another era. Light sweeps across decaying landscapes, bathing a population of figures all seemingly misplaced in the time period in which they find themselves. The artist is combining classical painting techniques and narratives with a distinctly modern sentiment.
As a culture we have a rocky history when it comes to seeing the Universal between people of different races and backgrounds. Noam Chomsky has been a leader in rediscovering the idea that there are universal grounds of the good that different societies seek even if they seem superficially different. Raicu creates work that speaks to Humanity with a capital H.

This point of universal ideas lends itself to the choice to portray his figures nude or partially nude. At the heart of the work, a human drama unfolds, despite the bleakness of their surroundings, they are still together, tenderly touching each other, playing music together, or caught in shared moments of reverie.
None of his characters are brutal or distressed, they look contended in a manner that drives the whole to this atmosphere of no point in time. Because, when Raicu paints, time is not a factor. A canvas might take 4-6 month to be completed in a difficult process for a mega realist. Genuinely painting, using no projector and starting from a charcoal sketch on the canvas, with virtually no photographic references the painting process is long but fulfilling, because at the end, the final painting vibrates a warm, clear sentiment of a product which was not been cheated upon.