Paul Neagu

This is the first comprehensive monograph dedicated to the Romanian-born artist Paul Neagu (1938–2004), who lived in London from 1971 to his death.It explores his manifold artistic practice which includes performance, sculpture, exhibition display, drawing, painting, video, photography, and poetry, within an original, holistic, metaphysical view on art. His aim was to develop a visual idiom that would be understood across cultures, but the demands and investigations of which are complex.This volume reevaluates his importance in London’s cosmopolitan artistic scene since the early 1970s and examines how his work was informed both by Western and Eastern avant-gardes.Only recently has his oeuvre, transcending artistic "disciplines," navigating between cultural contexts, juggling along the way an impressive number of intellectual and artistic references, become an important source of inspiration for young artists, curators, and intellectuals.Neagu's philosophical approach to his work led him to push the boundaries of abstraction that he first discovered clandestinely in Communist Romania.Gathering newly commissioned essays by art historians and curators, the book testifies the numerous ways to approach Neagu’s art and thinking and capture the rich fabric of his life. A detailed appendix comprising a glossary, an anthology of theoretical texts and manifestos, and a chronology and analysis of the artist’s notebooks completes this valuable tome.Published with The Paul Neagu Estate (UK) on the occasion of the artist’s touring retrospective in 2022–2023.