Medi Dinu

Margareta Wechsler "Medi" Dinu (January 4, 1909 [O.S. December 22, 1908] – July 18, 2016) was a Romanian classical painter of Jewish origin.

Margareta Wechsler Dinu was born in Brezoi, Vâlcea County, the daughter of a Jewish accountant, Daniel Wechsler, and a violin player, Amalia Hirschfeld.

Due to the rise in power of the Iron Guard, at the age of 8, she is forced to leave her hometown of Brezoi and in the next few years lives in several cities: Bucharest, Târgoviște, Cluj, Oradea, Râmnicu Vâlcea. She is spared deportation due to her father's veteran status. Medi pursues her studies, graduates the bourgeois "Choisi Mangru" high-school in Bucharest and speaks four languages; Romanian, German, Hungarian and French. Encouraged by her arts teacher, painter Costin Petrescu, she continues her studies at the Academy of Belle Arte, under Ipolit Strâmbu and Jean Alexandru Steriadi. At the same time, she studies at the Faculty of Mathematics under Dan Barbilian and the Faculty of Philosophy under Dimitrie Gusti and Nae Ionescu.

She debuts in 1932 at the "Official Salon of White and Black" exhibition in Bucharest, with a self-portrait. She joins the Syndicate of Artists a year later, which enables her to travel to Balchik, a meeting place of the (mostly Jewish) avant-garde artists of the time. Between 1934 and 1939 she visits the city of Balchik on several occasions and completes a number of works, befriending personalities such as Victor Brauner, Gellu Naum, Sașa Pană, Geo Bogza. Here, she also meets poet Gheorghe Dinu, who becomes her husband. In 1939, the mayor of Balchik, Octavian Moşescu, invites her to exhibit her works alongside other artists in the city's school.

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