10 Lei Gheorghe Petrașcu

Gheorghe Petrașcu (1872–1949) was among the most distinctive voices in Romanian painting — a student of Gustave Moreau in Paris who returned home to develop a heavily textured, chromatically rich style that resisted both the academic tradition and the various modernist movements sweeping Europe at the time. He outlived two world wars and died in Bucharest just as the communist cultural apparatus was beginning to enforce socialist realism, sparing him the choice many of his contemporaries were forced to make.

Romania's National Bank has issued collector silver pieces in this 31.103g format consistently since the 1990s, with the series covering Romanian cultural figures across art, literature, and science. Petrașcu's inclusion comes roughly 73 years after his death.