Lucian Popăilă (b. 1991) works in Cluj and is a graduate of the University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca. Currently represented mainly by the Sector 1 Gallery in Bucharest, his works have been exhibited in various public and private spaces in Romania (Minerva Gallery in Cluj; Casa Matei Gallery in Cluj, Sector 1 Gallery in Bucharest; the Brancovenești Palaces in Mogoșoaia), as well as by the Italian gallery Doris Ghetta.

The underlying theme found in all of Lucian Popăilă’s paintings is, sometimes more explicit, sometimes more veiled, painting itself, more precisely picturality, as a fundamental attribute of this venerable form of artistic expression. His paintings are therefore the equivalent of spiritual exercises, often ascetic, but not devoid of visual sensuality; the motifs approached pictorially are assumedly simple (branches, trees, birds, fish), thus allowing the artist to focus intensely on the indissoluble relationship between figure and matter, between archetypal essence and technically constructed hypostasis.