Marin Gherasim

(16 December 1937, Rădăuți, Suceava, Romania – 27 March 2017, Bucharest, Romania)

Marin Gherasim was a Romanian painter, university professor, art historian, and a key figure in post-war Romanian art. Born into a culturally rich Bucovinean family in Rădăuți, he developed a deep artistic sensibility influenced early on by the iconic painted monasteries of his native region. He studied at the Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of Fine Arts in Bucharest, where he graduated in 1962 and later served as assistant (1963–1983). Gherasim also worked as an art historian at the Institute of Art History in Bucharest and from 1990 to 2008 was a professor at the National University of Arts in Bucharest.

Gherasim was a founding member of the 9+1 Group, an artist collective created in response to the ideological pressures of the communist regime, advocating artistic integrity and conceptual depth. His work is characterized by a meditation on memory, sacred architecture, and symbolic imagery, with recurring motifs such as apses, gates, and geometric forms that evoke endurance, ritual, and spiritual construction. He exhibited widely in Romania and abroad and was repeatedly recognized with major awards, including the Ion Andreescu Prize of the Romanian Academy and the Grand Prize at the Sofia Triennale.

Throughout his career, Gherasim balanced painting, theory, and teaching, shaping generations of Romanian artists. His works are held in museums and collections in Romania and abroad. He was also President of Honour of the Union of Visual Artists (UAP) from 2012 until his death.