Paul Neagu’s diverse body of work encompasses sculpture, performance art and painting. He is probably best known for his series ‘Nine Catalytic Stations’, a concept that he obsessively explored and re-visited across the course of his career.
Poetry, philosophy and cosmology underpinned his practice, and ‘Nine Catalytic Stations’ is the most fully realised representation of the artist’s theories. Consisting of nine abstract forms arranged in a pattern relating to the points of the compass, Starhead, a monumental version of which we are delighted to offer here, was the northeast point in the formation.
Neagu has long been revered as one of Romania’s most important contemporary artists. He was critically well-regarded in his adopted country of Britain too, achieving teaching posts in some of London’s most prestigious institutions including the Slade and the Royal College of Art. In this capacity Neagu made an important impact on students such as Anish Kapoor, Tony Cragg and Anthony Gormley, who, unlike their teacher, went on to become household names. This may yet have been the case for Neagu himself were it not for council bureaucracy. Off the back of important solo shows at Modern Art Oxford (1975), ICA London (1979), and Serpentine Gallery (1987), he was awarded the opportunity to create a monumental Starhead to be permanently positioned at Charing Cross, London. Frustratingly, the project fell foul of red tape and was never seen to fruition. The plans for the project are now held in the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, and Tate purchased Neagu’s remaining archive upon his death. The Charing Cross project was to remain only a tantalising brush with wider public renown in the UK within his lifetime, though posthumously his market continues to gain pace at auction.
Charing Cross was not the only public sculptural commission of Neagu’s to be thwarted by the objections of councillors; few of Neagu’s sculptures were ever made to his intended scale. Starhead, dating to c. 1980, is therefore a rare exception and presented to market for the first time. It belonged to a close friend of Neagu’s, Dr Tom Scott, whose collection we are pleased to offer last year. Neagu’s artistic manifesto was defiantly cryptic, but the ‘starhead’ form has been interpreted by scholars to represent freedom, escape or potential. Scott, who had a privileged insight into Neagu’s process, writes:
To understand Neagu’s work it is essential to appreciate that he was brought up in an agricultural society and peasant economy. Rootedness to the soil (the hyphen as plough!) and to ‘mother earth’ are intrinsic to his work…. But so is the spiritual dimension (‘reaching for the stars’), representing transcendence and transformation, which is why the setting for these works outdoors I so important. The stars must sing and soar, stride and stretch.
Work by Neagu can be found in the British Museum, London, Tate, London, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.