Florin I Firimita

Born: Bucharest, Romania. Resides in the United States since 1990. Visual artist, teacher,author and filmmaker.

Florin Ion Firimita's mixed-media compositions are exploring universal themes through personal experiences. They are riddles born out of the juxtaposition of the real and the imagined, the private and the universal, the desire and the cancelled desire. He has been using both symbols linked to his family and Romanian roots, and found imagery, to which the artist is not initially related.What the artist pours into his art is a reflection of his interest in philosophy, music, photography, literature, film, nature, and history. He finds amazing sources of inspiration in everything surrounding him: his students work; his walks around the streets of New York City or Paris; a Mahler symphony; Proust and Borges; a Godard film; a graffiti-covered wall; an old photograph found at a flea market. Firimita is trying to create a sense of mystery in which the viewer is invited to complete his cosmology. Meaning is never a one-way road, and therefore is always a result of a collaboration between what the artist is trying to communicate, and what the viewers are willing to see.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

FLORIN ION FIRIMITA was born in Romania, where he started painting at the age of five under the influence of his father, an amateur photographer, and his mother, a fashion designer and a decorative arts teacher. He worked for many years as an assistant and apprentice to renowned artist Constantin Ciocarlie, then studied studio, mural painting and art history. Between 1986 and 1990, he worked as the Set and Costume Painter and also as the Production Manager for the Art Department at the National Theater of Opera and Ballet in Bucharest.
In 1990, he immigrated to the United States.

In the United States, Mr.Firimita graduated in May 1997 from Central Connecticut State University, with a degree in Art Education, and in 2005 with a Masters from the same university. He teaches, paints, exhibits, lectures and writes art-criticism, essays and stories about his experiences. He has been an artist-in-residence for both public and private schools in Connecticut, US, and worked as an art advisor for the Connecticut State Department of Education, during the 2000-2001 International Art Exchange Program, in The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. He has been recently appointed co-director of the Summer Visual Art...