Florin Ion Firimita

Florin Ion Firimita is a visual artist, writer and educator. He took his first photograph at the age of three using a Soviet made Zenith camera. His interest in image making could be traced back to his father’s modest amateur photo lab in Bucharest, Romania, where he was entrusted with mixing chemicals, developing film, and printing black-and-white images at the age of six. After his parents' death, he continued to study painting and drawing and kept taking photographs while holding jobs such as welder, grave digger, janitor, window decorator and security guard.    After relocating to the United States in 1990, Florin’s photography, mixed media work and writing have been featured in galleries and art magazines in Argentina, France, England, and the U.S. The Art of Leaving, a film about his art, was released in 2003. Based on almost 3,000 pages of journal entries, the film took three years to make and was the official selection of seven international film festival such as Santa Fe, Durango, New York, Chicago, and also Montreal’s 23rd Festival International du Film Sur L’Art. A second documentary, Dream Cages, filmed by Jeff Teitler during the 2020 pandemic, is currently in the works. His artwork could be found in many private and public collections in Europe, Australia, and the United States.  Between 1990 and 2020 he participated in over 400 solo and group exhibits. Most recently, Florin’s photography was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art/ Grand Palais in Paris. In 2010, 2012 and 2013, at Carnegie Hall in New York City, Scholastic awarded him three national gold medals for art pedagogy. In 2020, 10 of his photographs became part of the permanent collection of the Rodin Museum in Paris. His photography is represented by the GADCOLLECTION Gallery in Paris, France.