Essay: Eugene Mihaesco

Shades of detail had not yet been sketched in, but the picture’s message was evident. The boulder was Nicolae Ceausescu, and the people were trying to propel the monolith off a cliff. Staring at the unfinished illustration in New York City, a Rumanian guest of the artist Eugene Mihaesco remarked, “I guess we have to push a little harder.” That was a year and a half ago. The piece and others by Mihaesco, who was born in Bucharest, have since appeared in Universul, a U.S.-printed biweekly circulated underground in Ceausescu’s kingdom. And Rumanians did push, with all their heart, all their soul, all their might. Last week Mihaesco drew a sequel, the boulder smashed into pieces, which TIME set with the original to form a visual essay.

For Mihaesco, the personal cost has been heavy. Ceausescu was enraged at the drawings. In early 1989 Mihaesco’s 79-year-old father Nicolae, who lives in Bucharest, was sacked from his job, isolated from his friends and ordered to rein in his “seditious” son. “I’m crushed if you go on,” Nicolae told Eugene by telephone. “They will destroy me, destroy your mother.” Grasping for a solution, the artist screamed at his father — and the eavesdropping police — “Don’t tell me what to do. I disinherit you!” Children do not disinherit parents; this artist is crazy. Or so Mihaesco hoped the Securitate would think. Soon after, his father got his job back. But Nicolae Mihaescu did not understand his son’s vehemence. They have not spoken since.