Octavian Angheluță

Octavian Angheluță was a Romanian painter and university teacher. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in București while studying simultaneously at the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy. In 1928 he graduated in art. In the following year, he became a drawing teacher at a boys’ high school in Câmpina, Wallachia. He also had his first solo exhibition there in 1931 and received several awards for his works already in the 1930s.

During World War II, Angheluță lived in Râmnicu Vâlcea on the edge of the Carpathians. After the war, he took care of the art collections of the State Art Galleries in București and Iași, as well as those of the “Kalinderu” and “Theodor Aman” museums in București. In 1949, he was appointed curator of the National Gallery. From 1952-72, he taught as a professor at the Department of Painting and Composition of the Institute of Fine Arts “Nicolae Grigorescu” in București.

Angheluță was co-founder of the Association of Romanian Painters and Sculptors. Between 1930 and 1960, he made numerous study trips throughout Europe. At home and abroad, he participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. In communist Romania, Angheluță was honored with numerous state awards, the highest being the award of the Order “Star of the Socialist Republic of Romania”, second class, in 1965.

One of his few sports motifs he used for the oil painting Learning from the Masters of Soviet Sports. It could have been painted in the Carpathians in the late 1940s. Possibly the title was depoliticized to Sport and Friendship for the art exhibition in Helsinki.