The story
Twenty years in which Cluj became an art city
From a gallery opened in 2005 in a city with no art market, to a third Romanian pavilion in Venice. Seven milestones, every one sourced.
From Startup to Global Platform
Our Journey
01
2005
Plan B opens
Mihai Pop, a curator, and Adrian Ghenie, a 28-year-old painter, open a gallery in a city with no art market. They call it Plan B, and the name says exactly what it needs to: this was nobody’s first plan.
Venice, and a name coined in Prague
Plan B organises Romania’s pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, curated by Mihnea Mircan. That same year, at the Prague Biennale, the term “Cluj School” is used for the first time — for a generation that never called itself that.
Berlin
Plan B opens a permanent space in Berlin, at Strausberger Platz. The road from a Cluj studio to a German gallery now exists, and has been walked.
The Paintbrush Factory
With Plan B involved, an independent centre opens in a former paintbrush factory in Mărăști: around five galleries and thirty studios. For a decade it is the address you go to if you want to see what Cluj art is doing.
Ghenie in Venice
Mihai Pop curates Romania’s pavilion at the 56th Biennale, showing work by Adrian Ghenie. The second time in eight years that the national pavilion is effectively a Cluj pavilion.
The factory closes
After thirteen years, Fabrica de Pensule closes for good. The team’s statement calls the closure “a collective failure”. Nearly seven hundred people a month still search for it — which is why it has a page here, as history rather than as a destination.
Șerban Savu, “What Work Is”
Șerban Savu presents “What Work Is” at the Romanian Pavilion in the Giardini and at the New Gallery of the Romanian Institute of Culture in Venice, supported by Galeria Plan B. The third time, nearly two decades after the first.
Sources: Gallery Weekend Berlin, Contemporary Art Issue and Cultura la dubă, all read 10 September 2026. The Paintbrush Factory closing date was corrected from 2019 to 2022.
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