Adrian Ghenie is a Romanian painter whose work, characterized by macabre scenery and defaced figures, investigates the violent aspects of Europe’s history. Ghenie was born on August 13, 1977, in Baia Mare, Romania and graduated in 2001 from the University of Art and Design in Cluj. He went on to co-found Galeria Plan B in Cluj, an exhibition space which first opened in 2005 and later expanded to Berlin. Ghenie paints with a palette knife and stencils, and often chooses to depict important figures from history, notably including a series of portraits of Charles Darwin. His work has been compared to Francis Bacon and Mark Rothko. His best-known painting, The Fake Rothko (2010), depicts a man retching beside a Rothko painting propped...