Sunflowers (1993) Painting by Maria Otetelesanu

On 26th of April in the year 1949, my mother went to give birth to a little girl she wanted since the day she heard she was pregnant. But it was't meant to be like that. I (Mariuca) appeared on the world, my brother George and later (adopted) our sister Helen. I cannot realize even now how difficult it was for my mother. The times were in change. The communist regime has come quickly.
My mother, a top intellectual of the country was forced to retire and so she brought up the three of us without having a stable job. Hard times, misery and poverty. Mother and Dad without a job, we joung, little and weakly. It followed the evacuation from our house placed in a selected district. And so we got in a little apartment in one of the suburbs of the town.In the old house we lived with our cousins and the grandparents from my Dads side: Meme and Baban and from my Mums side: Grandmother and Grandfather.

Meme was a painter and a pianist, but we found that later, when we grew older. The grandparents and the parents struggled for us not to feel the lacks from the old good times and to have all we needed. In order to survive, Meme took a job at 60 years old, as a painter at the romanian Patriarchate and Baban remained home to take care of the home and of the two cousins of mine, Radu and Anca to whom we were like brothers and sister until the departure of Radu and Anca to USA and Canada and later the dead of Radu separated us. Grandmother and Grandfather (an ancient marine officer) ware delighting us with fairy tales or true stories of their life.
I was plaiyng like any other child but most of all I liked to draw (at mome or in the street on the pavement with coloured chalk). Once Grandmother scolded me and then at her fury, I started drawing on the walls from a case where she could't reach me. In spite of all her threatenings Mother didn't scold me, on the contrary, and at her encouragements all the walls of the room were full with Biblical scenes. In the church near our house, where often I took refuge to listen the sermons, I was imagining me a great paintrees and and I was very impressed by the rays of light that penetrated through the painted glases of the windows. My childhood was like a fary tale. Children, animals, the Grandparents and Mother who workwd for us. In order to bring us up (in the meantime she had divorced) Mother was giving lessons of Art History, theater direction, foreign languages and I was present most of the time. So I learned many things.


My entrance at the Fine Arts College was but natural for me. Here we formed ourselves the three of us. We had still very good teachers both at the general culture and at the speciality side. Most of all had made political prison and had beneficiated from the amnesty of 1964. The prisons becomed empty and by this Baban had come home also.
At the Fine Arts Institute I antered on the second attempt. At the ending of my Faculty I was obliged by the distribution of the working places to go t...

• Nationality: ROMANIA
• Date of birth : 1949
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Romanian Contemporary Artists