Independent space · 2009

Fabrica de Pensule

An independent cultural centre in a former paintbrush factory, opened in 2009 and closed for good in March 2022. Two thousand square metres, twenty-nine art spaces.

Closed since 2022. This place no longer operates. The page stays because people still search for it — not to send them to a locked door.

The Paintbrush Factory started in 2009 in a former factory in the Mărăști district, as the first collective project on that scale in Romanian cultural life. More than fifty artists, gallerists and cultural managers, two thousand square metres, twenty-nine spaces: studios, galleries, exhibition rooms and performance halls.

Across thirteen years it staged over two thousand events. It closed for good in March 2022, in a statement that calls the closure “a collective failure” — of the community, of local and national authorities, and of international partners. The building was to return to being an industrial space.

We list it as history rather than as a destination — nearly seven hundred people a month still search for it, and a guide that sent them to a locked door would not deserve a second reading.

Note: until September 2026 this record gave 2019 as the closing year, taken from foreign secondary sources. The correction and its sources are set out in a separate piece in the journal.

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