Daniela
Caraman

Daniela Caraman was born in 1973 in Botosani, a major artistic, literary, and cultural hub in northern Romania. She spent her childhood under the socialist regime during the Cold War, an experience that would later shape her poetics and her art. Having approached hand drawing and watercolor since she was a child, as a teenager she trained with Mihai Bejenaru, a prominent watercolour master who taught her a love for natural materials and for the many shades of earthy colors. Alien to pictorial realism, which was the socialist standard in visual arts, Daniela grew fonder and fonder of watercolor, which allowed her the freedom and the opportunity to follow less figurative paths, managing to win numerous competitions established by the Socialist Republic with her early works. After attending the University of Bucharest, Daniela continued to work with her teacher to perfect her style, and only in 1990, after the fall of the Regime, did she enroll in art school. In 1991, she started a project devoted to the concept of madness and its relationship with creativity, introspection, and art, spending three months in a psychiatric hospital to observe and portray patients. The works she painted during those months earned Daniela her first solo exhibition, which would gradually lead her to gain the attention of an international audience. Today, the works of Daniela Caraman are part of Italian and foreign private collections as well as solo and collective exhibitions. Her material, incisive pictorial imprint traces clear-cut outlines shaping a figurative synthesis that graces the subjects with charm and eloquence. Nature is seized in its very essence by her chromatic spots and patches, her evocative rendition of light, and the masterful way in which she subtly scatters sporadic details to add depth and expressivity to her works.