Ioana Bătrânu (b. 1960) is known for a valiant, prolific, and significant work, publicly present since the mid-1980s, in a tough period, which left its mark on the artist’s destiny. Ioana Batrânu’s painting absorbs everyday reality, the marginality of existence, and the contradictions of our spaces, marked by imposed and self-imposed social norms. The tension of her paintings is enhanced by the expression of her brushwork and chosen chromatics, and the recurrence of themes (Melancholic Interiors, Virgins, Closed Gardens, Dolls, and others) establishes a personal style of exceptional value and vitality. The spatial typologies the artist chooses to work with are reminiscent of those “species of spaces” that Georges Perec saw as extensions of memory: “space as inventory, space as invention.”