Executed in 1973 by the famous sculptor Oscar Han, it symbolizes the peace between the people. The statue was placed at the entrance in the city in the year 1990 and it represents a woman bearing a crown of laurels and a torch.
Oscar Han (born on the 3rd of December 1891, Bucharest – deceased on the 14th of February 1976, Bucharest) was an author, monograph and Romanian sculptor.
His father was of German origin, and his mother was Romanian from Vrancea.
Oscar Han studied at the National School of Beaux – Arts from Bucharest, in the workshop of Dimitrie Paciurea (the sculpture) and with Frederic Storck (the drawing).
His debut as a sculptor was very early, not even at 20 years. In 1911, Oscar Han got noticed with the work “Little girl head”.
He was the member of the “Group of the four”, of whom there were also part the painters Nicolae Tonitza, Ștefan Dimitrescu and Francis Șirato. In the year 1917, he was part of the 30 artists, painters and sculptors sent on the front of the Great General Quarter of the Army, in order to execute works inspired by the fights fought by the Romanian army.
He participated at the Official Saloons from Bucharest, he exhibited at different Romanian art exhibits abroad, as well as some international manifestations at Venice, Anvers, Paris, Hague, Amsterdam, Barcelona.
In a series of portrays (Pârvan, Eminescu, Iorga, Sofocle, Dante), he shows to be preoccupied by the plastic transcription of some values of the physical and moral portray of the respective personality.
When he approached the monumental composition, the stake would fall on the rhetoric of the gesture and, equally, on the massiveness of the volumes, on the imperious materialization of the figurative material (Victory, 1932; Constantin Brâncoveanu, 1936; Anghel Saligny, 1958, etc.).
On the 1st of January 1927, he was named a substitute teacher at the department of sculpture of the School of Beaux – Arts from Bucharest, where he shared the only sculpture workshop with his former professor D. Paciurea. After his death, he remained a tenure teacher until the year 1946.
In the legislature 1934 – 1937 he was a liberal deputy of Mureș, but he couldn’t stand out in the Parliament. Because of the fact that he entered into Politics, during the liberal governments, he succeeded to adjudicate most of the state orders.
In 1945, the communists accused Oscar Han of being a legionary (possibly because of the bust of Prof. Nae Ionescu, executed by Oscar Han in 1928).
Pursuant to the law regarding the purification because of the former association with the pro-fascist regime, adopted in a new formula on the 30th of March 1945, the sculptor Oscar Han, professor at the School of Beaux – Arts, he was removed from the education for a period of one year by a Decree signed my Mihail Ralea, fresh minister of Arts. Further on, Oscar Han adapted to the new regime and he was among the ones who executed works of an inferior esthetic quality.
