Lena Constante

Lena Constante (June 18, 1909 – November 2005) was a Romanian artist, essayist and memoirist, known for her work in stage design and tapestry. A family friend of Communist Party politician Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, she was arrested by the Communist regime following the conflict between Pătrăşcanu and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. She was indicted in his trial and spent twelve years as a political prisoner.

Constante was the wife of the musicologist Harry Brauner, and the sister-in-law of the painter Victor Brauner.

Born in Bucharest, she was the daughter of an Aromanian journalist (who had immigrated from Macedonia) and his Romanian wife. The Constante family left the city during the World War I German occupation, and Lena spent much of her childhood in Iaşi, Kherson, Odessa, London and Paris.

Returning at the end of the conflict, she studied Painting at the Romanian Art Academy in Bucharest, and established friendships with leading intellectuals of her time, including Brauner, Mircea Vulcănescu, Petru Comarnescu, Henri H. Stahl, Mihail Sebastian, and Paul Sterian. During the period, she became sympathetic to left-wing politics and joined the sociological project initiated by Dimitrie Gusti, aiding in the creation of comprehensive monographs on traditional Romanian society; her visits to various villages acquainted her with traditional folk art, especially religious icons, which she later used as inspiration in her work.

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