Education and schoolteaching Born in
Câmpulung, he was raised in a poor household and was marked by his mother's early death. Receiving support from several individuals he went to the national capital
Bucharest Subsequently, he became an associate professor at the
University of Cluj, which was located in a region that had come under Romanian jurisdiction with the
union of Transylvania with Romania.
Professorate and Art History Institute From 1923 to 1930, Oprescu served as secretary of the
League of Nations'
International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC) in Geneva; and then of the Committee on Literature and Art until 1939, when he moved back to Romania. In 1931,
Nicolae Iorga invited him to join the University of Bucharest's faculty, and he became chairman of art history there. From 1932 to 1942, he headed the Toma Stelian Museum, donating to it many of the artworks he had purchased both at home and abroad; the museum's collection later passed to the
National Museum of Art of Romania. In 1948, after the establishment of a
Communist regime, he became an honorary member of the
Romanian Academy. From 1949 until his death in 1969, he headed the academy's Institute of Art History, which he founded and which today bears his name. Although a pragmatic collaborator with the regime, he nevertheless hired marginalized or persecuted figures such as
Ion Frunzetti,
Alexandru Paleologu,
Remus Niculescu,
Emil Lăzărescu,
P. H. Stahl and
Pavel Chihaia. During his time at the institute, he promoted scientific research, archival and field work, and its endowment with books and documents that would later develop into a library. He also founded two journals,
Studii și Cercetări de Istoria Artei and ''Revue Roumaine d'Histoire de l'Art''. Oprescu was homosexual. In early 1959, he was summoned by police investigators looking into homosexual activity by a number of individuals, among them Oprescu's employee, the musicologist
Mihai Rădulescu and the latter's lover, the documentary filmmaker
Petre Sirin. According to Sirin's account, an irritated Oprescu entered the office announcing, "I am the academician George Oprescu!", to which the investigator answered menacingly, "Get out, you old whore! And come in only when I call you!" His face pale, Oprescu promptly exited. == Notes ==