SULTANA MAITEC

Sultana Maitec was born in Livezi in the Pindus Mountains, Greece, in 1928. She graduated from the Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of Fine Arts, Bucharest, in 1955. She held her first solo exhibition at the Salle Dalles, Bucharest, in 1967. In 1988, there followed a second solo show in the same exhibition space. She also held solo exhibitions at the Timișoara Museum of Art in 1989, the Art of the Century Gallery, Paris, in 1992, the Romanian Cultural Centre, Paris, in 1993, and the Museum of the Criș Region in 2000. The Romanian National Museum of Art organised a major exhibition of the work of Ovidiu and Sultana Maitec in 2001. This was followed by two Ovidiu and Sultana Maitec exhibitions at the Allianz Țiriac Gallery in 2004 and at the Romanian Academy, Bucharest, in 2006. She took part in numerous group exhibitions both before and after 1989, in Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Finland, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and Hungary.

Undertaking an aesthetic journey marked by an increasing attraction to the non-figurative and employing the gold-leaf technique, the work of Sultana Maitec has been the subject of studies by Romania’s leading art critics and historians, including Andrei Pleșu, Miron Radu Paraschivescu, Dan Grigorescu, la Dan Hăulică, Theodor Enescu, Mihai Drișcu, Octavian Barbosa, Grigore Hagiu and, more recently, Pavel Șușară and Ion Bogdan Lefter, to mention but a few.

Sultana Maitec won numerous awards and prizes, including the Order of Cultural Merit in 1975 and the Prize of the Romanian Academy in 1989. Her works can be found in the collections of the Romanian National Museum of Art (MNaR), the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), the Bucharest Municipal Museum of History and Art, Piatra Neamț County Museum of Art, Botoșani County Museum of Art, Suceava County Museum of Art, Bacău County Museum of History and Art, Galați Museum of Visual Art, the Bruckenthal National Museum, Sibiu, and numerous private collections. She was a member of the Romanian Union of Fine Artists. She passed away in 2016, in Bucharest.