(b Danesti, 27 July 1938). Romanian sculptor, ceramicist and painter. He studied at the Institute of Fine Arts ‘Ion Andreescu’, Cluj-Napoca, graduating in 1962 and making his début in 1964 with a one-man exhibition of drawings in Cluj-Napoca. Subsequently he taught sculpture and pottery at the Institute of Fine Arts, where he established a ceramic school that influenced successive generations of Romanian artists. Spataru experimented extensively with firing ceramics, including faience and porcelain, because he wished to express his creativity by making objects with a utilitarian purpose as well as a sculptural morphology. He preferred a modelling technique that allowed him an interplay of subtle variations between grace and drama, between monumentality and the exaltation of detail. Until 1976 he tried to find successful ways of placing his figurative and abstract works in public spaces. After achieving national and international success as a sculptor, Spataru retired from public life in 1976 when the authorities closed the most active gallery in Bucharest, the Galeria Nuoa. He made a comeback in 1990 with a large exhibition of porcelain sculpture of mutilated busts melted into truncated columns, which became Romania’s entry in the Venice Biennale of the same year: he entitled this installation piece Torture (320 elements, artist’s col.; see exh. cat., p. 209). Also in 1990 he became rector of the Art Academy of Bucharest, where he tried to reform Romanian artistic teaching through introducing more dynamic concepts.