Mihai Eminescu and Ion Creanga

Having had the sketch of the composition in his studio in Saint Petersburg for several years, Dumitru Verdianu transforms this project into a gesture of return: he "brings home" to Ungheni, Mihai Eminescu and Ion Creangă. The work is designed monumentally, and it is precisely this monumentality that takes it out of the register of a simple park object: it functions as a commemorative landmark and a point of cultural reflection, which is why it was placed separately from the other works of art in the edition.

Verdianu does not pursue a descriptive narrative, but concentrates the message in archetypal gestures and in the relationship between two massive, almost monolithic presences. The faces, individualized enough for recognition, are framed by simplified volumes, with surfaces kept rough in places, as if the stone retained the weight of time. This plastic option shifts the emphasis from anecdote to essence: friendship and separation become universal themes, not just biographical episodes.

The moment evoked is that of the final separation, interpreted as a serious encounter, dominated by regret. The proximity of the two suggests solidarity and attachment, but their posture also indicates the inevitable: they are together, but the separation is already present, like a distance that begins to open up even within the group. The sadness is not theatrical; it is transmitted through the silence of the forms, through the pressed verticality and through the way in which the sculptural mass seems to "close" a final farewell.

In this way, Mihai Eminescu and Ion Creangă becomes a work about memory and continuity: two classics of Romanian literature are set in stone not as triumphal statues, but as symbols of an exemplary friendship and the loss that accompanies every destiny. The sculpture not only commands admiration, but invites reflection—on the man behind the famous name, on the connection between spirits, and on the way in which culture preserves, beyond separation, what is essential.