The favorite artist of Romania’s dictators has died of cancer, yesterday, at the age of 76.Balasa was one of the best paid Romanian artists before and after the 1989 Revolution.
The painter was kept alive by the doctors at “Sfanta Maria” Hospital in Bucharest for the past three weeks. His multiple cancers reached terminal stages and the painter was paralyzed.
During the communist era, Balasa became renowned for the paintings of the Ceausescu couple, who paid good money when it came to their personality cult. The administration of the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest offered 320.000 euros for a mural painting (57,5 square meters) in their library.
Initially, Balasa asked a staggering price of one million euros for the work. By comparison, the most expensive painting ever sold by a Romanian artist is “Girl in the grass” by Nicolae Grigorescu, which was purchased at 59.900 euros in 2003.
Sabin Balasa was born on June 17, 1932, in the southern region of Romania, at Dobriceni. He studies art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest and continues his studies at Sienna and Perugia in Italy.
Besides propaganda portraits, his main work consists of the 21 mural paintings from the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iasi. The work stretches on an 276 square meters. He also created 12 films of “animated paintings”.
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