Cătălin Bădărău (b. 1981, Adjud) is a sculptor who lives and works in Bucharest. He studied sculpture at the National University of Arts in Bucharest (UNArte) under Aurel Vlad (BA 2007, MA 2009, PhD 2014), with a study scholarship in Rome in 2008. Since 2008 he has taught as a university assistant in UNArte’s Sculpture Department, and he has been a member of the Union of Visual Artists of Romania (UAP) since 2007. His sculpture deals with the human body under pressure: violence, suffering, labour, migration, dehumanisation and guilt, and in recent years the memory of communist repression and the sacred. The hand, as a gesture of work, blessing or punishment, is the central motif.
He works with materials that are unusual in Romanian sculpture (silicone, polyurethane foam, resins, iron, glass, water, carved polystyrene, composite stone) and, more recently, with bronze cast in a single piece from silicone moulds, its surfaces worked with graphite so that the form looks soft while being hard. The series “Depersonalizare” (Depersonalisation), “Meat Me”, “Derail”, “Washing the Guilt Away”, “Brotherly Love”, “Martirii” (The Martyrs) and “Anatomy of My True Belief” range from wall and plinth pieces to installations with water and monumental groups, such as the eleven 3.5 m sculptures of “Moving Monuments” (Pitești Prison Memorial, 2017) and the six of “Martirii” (Iuliu Maniu Memorial House, Bădăcin, 2025).
His solo exhibitions include “Perpetuum Violence” at Nasui Collection & Gallery (2016), a solo show at Mogoșoaia Palace (2019), “Land of Plenty” at the Romanian Cultural Institute in London (2021), “Washing the Guilt Away” at Mobius Gallery (2022), “Performative Sculpture” at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu (2024), and “Pata carmin a gesturilor definitive” (A Crimson Stain for Definitive Gestures) at IOMO Gallery (2025, curated by Horațiu Lipot). He has had two solo shows at Galerie#23 in Velbert, Germany (2013, 2015), exhibited “Uprooted / Dezrădăcinat” with Aurel Vlad at the Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research in Venice (2016), and taken part in Contemporary Istanbul (2015) and RAD Sculpture Park, Bucharest (2025, 2026). The Brukenthal National Museum acquired one of his works in 2024.
He was included in the anthology “100 Sculptors of Tomorrow” (Thames & Hudson, 2019). He received the UAP Prize for Sculpture for 2024, the UAP Youth Prize (2017), and sculpture prizes at the Gheorghe Petrașcu Biennial in Târgoviște (2010) and the Aegyssus Biennial in Tulcea (2015).
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