50 Lei Valentina Rusu Ciobanu

Valentina Rusu-Ciobanu, born in 1920, was among the most significant Moldovan painters of the Soviet period — a distinction complicated by the fact that her career required navigating censorship while maintaining a distinctly humanist figural style that Soviet cultural authorities periodically found inconvenient. She died in 2017, just three years before this issue, which was part of the National Bank's ongoing series honoring prominent Moldovan cultural figures.