The work is executed by the artist George Ciobanu and it was the wish of the mayor of Calafat, Mircea Guță, to have it in Calafat, a dear city of Ștefan Iordache. The Cultural Centre, in front of which sits in state this master of theater art, will carry the name “Ștefan Iordache”.
It is the first sculpture which represents Ștefan Iordache from his disappearance from our world (September 2008). The gesture of this city’s authorities is the gratification for the grand art which the actor slaved with much faith; it is the gratification for the love carried by the regretted artist to the secularly Calafat, about which he spoke anytime he had the opportunity.
The bust, created by George Ciobanu, is executed in artificial stone with bronze patina, and the pedestal which supports the work is made of black marble.
Ștefan Iordache spent his childhood at Calafat, at his grandparents from his mother’s side, but he came with his parents in the capital at tender years and he spent his childhood hereinafter in the neighborhood Rahova from Bucharest, in a family of simple people, who wanted for their suns to study. In the school he was good at mathematics and at exact sciences. The theater studies weren’t his first choice. He applied for theater only after he failed, at 16 years, the entrance exam at Med School. After this failure, it happened that he was included in the artistic brigade of a cooperative. In the following year, 1959, he applied for Theater and he was accepted last at IATC. But, he graduated the Acting section of the institute among the first ones and he had an artistic career crowned by success, until the end of his life. His last role was the Prince Potemkin, in the play Ekaterina the Great, by George Bernard Shaw, enacted in 2008 at the National Theater of Bucharest.
Ștefan Iordache was one of the biggest Romanian theater, film and television actors. He served the Romanian theater for 49 years, interpreting memorably on the stage big roles such as Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Richard the IIIrd or Barrymore. He also had a long standing collaboration with the Radiophonic National Theater of with the National Television Theater, and he played in numerous films for the big screen.
Ștefan Iordache was and is a very good interpreter of popular music. It is famous the couple Ștefan Iordache – Sanda Ladoși who interpreted a series of songs – recorded on several CDs.
He was married for more than 40 years with Nicolae Tonitza’s grand-daughter, Mihaela Tonitza – Iordache, who worked in theater science and as university professor. They didn’t have children.
Ștefan Iordache passed away on the 14th of September 2008 in a hospital from Vienna. The actor was suffering of leukemia. He was buried with military honors in the commune Gruiu.
