Ion Barladeanu or who is an artist [marginality]

Ion Barladeanu is an artist discovered a few years ago by a Bucharest based gallery owner, Dan Popescu from H’Arta gallery. His story seems amazing and I found out about him reading the newspaper; I was fascinated by the images published by the H’Arta gallery website. He is not a professional artist in the consecrated sense, still he creates art. At a time when the Romanian state still dedicates important resources to the education, promotion and exhibition of state-sponsored artists, one can be but dazzled by the output of such a policy inherited from the communist regime and that was not really questioned after 1989. My opinion is that it does not belong to the state, to the political to decide who is an artist and must be encouraged to create. Private interests should articulate the arts.