Brandusa Niro Leaves Publishing Behind — Her First Solo Show Opens in Brooklyn This November

Brandusa Niro spent more than two decades building The Daily Front Row into one of fashion publishing's most essential properties. After selling the company at the end of 2025, she's doing something she's been doing all along — painting. And now she has a gallery to show for it.

MUSES, her first solo exhibition with Presley Fine Arts, opens Thursday, November 5 at The Grand Bedford in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a reception from 6 to 8:30 PM. The show runs through November 24 at 165 Bedford Avenue.

The work is large-scale figurative-expressionist portraiture in oil on linen — elongated figures, luminous eyes, saturated color. Each painting begins as a written character, drawn from decades of encounters across New York, Paris, Milan, Monaco and beyond. The women in these paintings are composites: the cheeks and mouth of one model, the eyes of another, the hair of a third, assembled into someone entirely new.

Among the works: DORA, a 21-year-old NYU film student working nights at the Cedar Tavern in the East Village, whose punk exterior — slicked-back hair, black bodysuits, tough-girl makeup — can't contain what lives underneath. Very Chérie, a former artist and dancer who moved through Montmartre and eventually landed in Miami, where she became a muse to many. The Black Tulip, a composed figure in dark styling whose presence sharpens rather than softens.

Niro's artistic roots run deep — her aunt was sculptor Geta Caragiu, her uncle the legendary Romanian actor Toma Caragiu, her mother a celebrated author and TV personality. She began winning national art competitions as a teenager in Romania before relocating to the US via Paris, where she built a media career before returning to the canvas full-time. Her work has been shown at Art Miami, Art Palm Beach, and Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary, and is held in private collections internationally.

MUSES opens November 5 at The Grand Bedford, 165 Bedford Ave., Williamsburg, Brooklyn. On view through November 24.