Mihai Olos

Mihai Olos (1940 – 2015, lived and worked in Romania and Germany) was one of the most prominent Romanian artists from the 1970s generation, known for his distinctive approach of the visual language through the fundamental principles defining his native county of Maramures, such as tradition, nature and folk culture. Being interested in various media – painting, sculpture, happening, land art and even literature – he developed a coherent conceptual system of modular morphologic structures driving him to the utopian project of the Universal City – Olospolis – that would 'translate' the structure of traditional symbolic objects into models for an expanded urban construction for the future.

The influences of constructivism, abstractionism and social involvement placed him early in his career among the most experimental artists from Romania. The artist's participation at Documenta 6 in 1977, in Joseph Beuys’ Free International University, laid the foundation for a long friendship with Beuys, an admirer of his actions and sculptures.