Dorel PETREHUȘ was born on February 19, 1957, in Dumbrava – Târgu Lăpuș, Maramureș County. He is a visual artist, a painter, and a full member of the Union of Visual Artists of Romania since 1990, specializing in painting, at the Baia Mare branch. He is also a museographer at the Museum of the Oaș Land in Negrești-Oaș. Dorel Petrehus’ painting lies between the two-dimensional space created by chromatic contrasts and texture contrasts, structured on materials present in the culture of the traditional Maramureșan space, specifically the Lăpuș Land, where the artist was born, but also from the Oaș Land, his adopted place. In 2015, he was awarded the title of Artist of the Year for his entire creative activity by the Municipality of Baia Mare.
In the center of the painting proposed by the artist lies the idea of culture and the notion that it represents us; that humans possess the universal ability to symbolically be aware of their existence and transform the world based on symbols. Thus, in his canvases appear icons related to religious beliefs and ideas, from possible Abrahamic, Mithraic, totemic, or even animistic origins, and the list could go on. The Old Testament tree with its associated branches, angelic wings, the New Testament cross, the sacrificial blood linked to these, as well as to bullfighting, the overlays of humans with bulls, embryonic metamorphoses, and the reference to the idea of birth as emergence or initiation, are constant interchangeable elements in Dorel Petrehuș’s creation. (Mihai Plămădeală)
