GEORGE SARU

Born in 1920 in Romania.  Saru studied in Mexico, France, Portugal, England, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, W. Germany, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the USSR and Bulgaria.

From 1938 to 1982 he was a Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts "N. Grigorescu" in Bucharest, coming to be considered the greatest influence in modern art for hundreds of artists.  Saru was simultaneously Editor-in-Chief of ARTA Magazine [1950-1964]. 

His works are in public and private collections across the globe, and in museums from the Hermitage [USSR] and Scandinavia, Europe, Canada, Japan and the US. His exhibitions have been mounted from Quebec to Cairo to Paris to Venice and Moscow, and in one man shows too numerous to mention.  Honors and awards were sometimes shared with his wife, the artist Liana Saru, as for the Romanian National Prize [for Monumental Tapestry].

He was invited to live and work in the US by the US Information Agency in 1983, and painted until his last days despite losing much of his eyesight; he died in New York in 2003.

Crystal [1987] is one of only two paintings Saru painted in this geometric collage form; the other is in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.