"My mother said that if I wanted to be an artist, I would be successful. That was the hardest thing of all for me as the urge for art creation were born while I was in prison. My mother died, and I had no real chance to pay last tribute. At that time, it was not about finding my style or make it in the art world; it was about setting me free and what I had to say.” - G. Virtosu.
Gheorghe Virtosu ’s way of being in the world combines to perfection a straightforward and down-to-earth nature with a mystical and mysterious streak. The passionate nature has always urged him to follow intellectual and deeply spiritual pursuits, and therefore becoming a children’s author has fulfilled a heartfelt personal need, while at the same time mastering large scale art projects. From the very beginning, his creation has eluded all canonization, contemporary and classical, since it cannot be labelled as belonging to any of them for definite.
The contemporary artist was born on April the 14th 1968, in a small village in Basarabia, within a loving family. When he was only 15 years of age, he decided to leave home and continue his education at a town college a few good miles away from home. In doing so, he came against many adversities, while having to comply with a rigorous discipline imposed by the school, mostly through a very active and physically demanding sportive schedule. In the end, however, the active sporty lifestyle he led in college served him in good credit for the compulsory military service which followed soon after graduation.
Having envisaged a military career for himself, he ended up as a resilient character ready to tackle head-on any other challenges which life might have thrown at him. After the fall of the Communist system in USSR, Gheorghe resigned from the army and went abroad in search of a new life, like most of the young people of Easter-European background.
After having travelled the world far and wide, thus achieving one of his childhood dreams rendered as impossible for anyone growing up behind the Iron Curtain, the artist eventually chose Britain as his adoptive country, settling down in London and acquired British citizenship after a few years.
In 2004, the artist was detained by the French authorities. At the end of a long and costly investigation, he was accused of having created one of the greatest networks of immigration in Europe since The Great War.
Born under the bold sign of Aries, the artist is hardly a man to be kept down by any circumstances. Although deprived of his freedom of movement, his mind and spirit soared up to heights of creative power never reached before. As a result of his confinement in isolation, Virtosu came up with two
novels. After a period of intense creative strain, he found himself at his wits’ end, experiencing mental and physical fatigue. In the remaining time of his incarceration, he kept on sketching ideas and characters which would, later on, come to life in his oil paintings.
