n. 1940, Cluj
Ana Lupaș
Born in Cluj in 1940, she has worked here all her life — and Tate and the Stedelijk bought her work within the last decade.
Ana Lupaș was born in Cluj-Napoca in 1940, studied at the city’s Institute of Fine Arts — the institution now called the University of Art and Design — and worked here. She emerged in the 1960s as one of the leading Eastern European women artists of her generation, working with modest materials: wool, cotton and hemp, across textile, sculpture, installation and action.
“Humid Installation” (1970) hung wet fabric above trenches in the Transylvanian countryside. “The Solemn Process” (1964–2008) was made with rural communities in Transylvania; Tate bought it in 2016. “Coats to Borrow” (1989), handmade coats that circulated among the members of Atelier 35, entered the Stedelijk Museum’s collection in 2022.
In May 2024 the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam opened her exhibition “On this Side of the River Elbe”, co-produced with the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein. Under the communist regime her work functioned as a quiet form of resistance — and all of it was made from here.
The storyPart of the story of Cluj as an art city (1962): Before the market →
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Studied at the Institute of Fine Arts in Cluj, today the University of Art and Design
source · 2026-10-19