Mihai Horea

Mihai Horea spent his life painting the Danube Delta’s flat, marshy light—he’d haul his easel into the reeds at dawn, brushes wrapped in plastic to keep the mist off. The prints and canvases he left behind are full of smokestacks and silos lurched into fields, mixing factories with wild poplars. You’ll see the real thing if you stand on the bridge at Calica at 7 a.m.; his *Octombrie la Calica* hangs in the riverside café, and the sky in the painting matches the sky outside.