Exhibition

Only
Painting

The Collectors | A series of contemporary art exhibitions

Period 21 May — 31 July 2026
Location La Mița Biciclista Stabiliment Creativ Str. Biserica Amzei 9
Exhibition tickets
Work from the curatorial selection of The Collectors / Only Painting
Curatorial statement

La Mița Biciclista opens its first contemporary art exhibition: “The Collectors / Only Painting” — the story of a collector who started acquiring only paintings in 1995, exactly when the Romanian art scene, aligned with the new international currents, was declaring painting dead. Installation, video art, digital art and new media were becoming the legitimate forms of contemporary expression. Painting was held in contempt.

Daniel Ștefănică went against the current. For three decades he quietly built a remarkable collection of post-revolution Romanian painting, now brought together under the curatorial direction of Erwin Kessler, in dialogue with La Mița Biciclista.

“Only Painting” proposes an alternative: not an institutional collection, but a private, contemporary one — built equally from need and devotion, at a time when both critical discourse and the market were headed the other way. The first edition of “The Collectors,” a new programme at La Mița Biciclista dedicated to private collections of Romanian contemporary art.

Curator: Erwin Kessler Architecture and design: Attila Kim

Visiting hours
Thursday — Friday 18:00 — 22:00
Saturday — Sunday 12:00 — 22:00
Monday — Wednesday Closed
Full ticket
30 lei

General access

Reduced ticket
15 lei

Pupils · Students · Seniors

Exhibition tickets

For visits outside opening hours with groups of more than 10 people, you can reach us at contact@lamitabiciclista.ro.

Curatorial selection
Nicolae Comănescu· Gili Mocanu· Dumitru Gorzo· Ecaterina Vrana· Roman Tolici· Florin Tudor· Bogdan Vlăduță· Ștefan Ungureanu· George Anghelescu· Ioana-Carolina Ursa· Ciprian Paleologu· Codruța Cernea· Angela Bontaș· Tara von Neudorf· Simona Vilău· Adrian Preda· Suzana Dan· Anca Mureșan· Florin Ciulache· Alina Pențac· Cristian Todor

The Daniel Ștefănică private collection, curated by Erwin Kessler.

Painting by Nicolae Comănescu
Artist

Nicolae Comănescu

Co-founder of the Rostopasca Group, one of the most radical artistic collectives of the post-1989 transition, Comănescu has never painted “like a painter”. His works are replies to context — urban, nervous, saturated with the substance of Bucharest. From the raw, text-heavy series of the 1990s, to the pixelated urban landscapes and American panoramas of the 2000s, the collection tracks him across two decades. He is the most-represented artist in this exhibition, and perhaps the strongest argument that post-revolution Romanian painting has never been a retrospective gesture, but one of direct confrontation with the present.

Painting by Roman Tolici
Artist

Roman Tolici

Technically impeccable, conceptually unforgiving. Tolici paints with the precision of a hyperrealist and thinks like a philosopher. A crucified plush rabbit. A giant brain stuck in an inner courtyard. A horse stable beside a black forest. Each work is a device that looks perfect and disturbs deeply.

Painting by Ștefan Ungureanu
Artist

Ștefan Ungureanu

Ungureanu’s paintings are visual machines: oil platforms levitating against a turquoise sky, amphitheatres where grey crowds watch something unseen, human bodies climbing over one another to clear a wall. Technically virtuosic, thematically apocalyptic. The “Vanitas” series reformulates the classical still life with robotic arms and digital skulls. A painter making history painting about a present no one commissioned.

Painting by Codruța Cernea
Artist

Codruța Cernea

Flat, pop, irresistibly elegant. A red fish held in the arms of a figure in a winter cap. A boat seen from above, white skeleton on a pink ground. A line of coloured skis like a musical score. Cernea paints ordinary objects with a decorative precision that turns them into icons of the everyday. The apparent quiet of her surfaces conceals a fine humour and absolute compositional control.

Painting by George Anghelescu
Artist

George Anghelescu

Anghelescu’s canvases are war scenes that never happened, or are always happening. Figures in hazmat suits, planes in nosedive, antique busts caught up in tropical chaos. Large format, saturated palette, dense composition: everything points to a contemporary mural painting that hasn’t yet found its wall.

Painting by Ciprian Paleologu
Artist

Ciprian Paleologu

Violent colour, exposed body, maximum tension. “Genesis the first one” is an image that doesn’t leave you easily: a red figure on an electric blue ground, holding an embryo. Paleologu paints at the edge between expressionism and art brut, with a visual honesty that refuses any decorative refinement.

Location

La Mița Biciclista Stabiliment Creativ
Str. Biserica Amzei 9, Bucharest.

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