How good are you at welding? Don’t even know how to turn the blowtorch on? Me neither. And how good are you at drawing sketches? Super bad? Me too. Unlike us, guys with no talents, this super talented guy from Romania can not only draw, he can weld. And I don’t know which part of it is more impressive. And since this young genius is about to go down in history, here’s everything you need to know about him and his art.
Darius Hulea is a Romanian sculptor who is famous for his master portraits made of molded cast-iron, brass wires, copper and stainless steel. Every piece of his artwork is fragmented as though a three dimensional sketch left incomplete.
The artist graduated from the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, specializing in Sculpture and in 2012 he became a member of the Union of Plastic Artists. In 2010, Darius Hulea received an Erasmus scholarship in Schrems (Austria) and participated in several group exhibitions in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Dej and Alba Iulia. His artworks are currently all over Romania. He’s been invited to do installation art at many different grant exhibitions.
The artist brings his sculptures to life by masterfully mixing the elements of modern and classic art. He takes industrial materials and weld them into “portraits” of historical figures everyone can recognize, like famous writers, artists, philosophers and poets.
When he was just a little boy, Darius discovered the craftworks that were found in his village. His grandma used to weave traditional Romanian fabrics that is still used today. His grandfather worked with agricultural equipment, giving little Darius an insight into the beauty of industrial materials. Having combined all these skills and knowledge, Darius translated them to sculpture.
Even though his art is considered contemporary in terms of materials used and execution, his works are based on the principals of classic drawing. Every piece looks like a sketch that was left unfinished which gives the viewer some room for interpretation. The skilled artist uses wires that resemble pencil strokes to create a three dimensional sculpture.
One art critic once said about Darius’s work: “Darius’s work is always full of energy and veracity. It has a certain and well recognizable elegance that lay in expression and style that is the result of the artist’s observational skills and analysis.”
Darius loves metal because it gives him artistic freedom. He can melt it, fold it and alter it in any way he wants to and get quite an interesting and unique piece of art in the end. His art is drawing but in a new way. Metal as a durable material of the past helps the artist explore and research different periods in human history and reimagine them through his 3D metal art.
Darius’s sculptures truly are unique. There might be a lot of artists out there who weld metal into something artsy, but the way Darius does it is a totally new level. His artworks don’t look crude and clumsy, like most of welded art pieces do. They have this certain elegance that makes it hard to take your eyes off. I don’t know about you but I would spend hours carefully reviewing every detail.