Florin Niculiu graduated from the National Institute of Fine Arts Nicolae Grigorescu in 1951. The Academy had the mission to prepare painters, sculptors, and graphic artists for the communist party’s program, in power at the time in Romania. Some of Niculiu’s teachers were one of the most important artists like Camil Ressu, Ion Steriadi, and Nicolae Darascu.?

From 1952 to 1956, he worked on mural paintings in Buzau, but his work was often at odds with his continuous fight against the formalism of the visual artists’ union. He was seen as an author of still life's and landscapes that reflected emotional depression and pessimism. While always focused on reality,&nbs...