Paul Neagu

Romanian sculptor and teacher in London art schools, who influenced a generation of students and British artists

His work as both a teacher and a practitioner influenced a whole generation of British artists. Like his great mentor, Constantin Brancusi, Neagu had to make a difficult emotional journey from Romania to the west. (…) Contrary to the current of sculpture in Britain in the 1970s, Neagu asserted that sculpture did not necessarily have to refer only to the means of its making but could find a language to express more complex ideas, albeit symbolically.
(…) Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Neagu continued to develop the Hyphen as a form, but a rigidity entered his practice. It was as if the Hyphen too fully encapsulated a formal and symbolic world and that earlier inventiveness was left behind.

Published by The Guardian, Monday 28 of June 2004 by Anish Kapoor http://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/jun/28/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries