In 1928, at the graduation of the academy, he made his debut at the Bucharest Painting and Sculpture Exhibition, where he displayed his work "Eden". In 1975, he donated an impressive number of sculptures and drawings to the Fălticeni Museum, with which it created the "Ion Irimescu" Collection. He was named as the president Romanian Plastic Artists' Union in 1978, where he activated until 1989. On 27 February 2003, the Romanian Academy celebrated him on the occasion of his 100th birthday. At the end of his life he retreated to Fălticeni, where he took care of the museum that contained half of his works. Irimescu donated his works (approximately 300 sculptures and 1,000 drawings) and, as a result, it was created the biggest permanent collection of an author from Romania. One of his works, the statue of
Dimitrie Cantemir, was at
Biblioteca Ambrosiana in
Milan, between the statues of
Dante and
Shakespeare. Ion Irimescu said that, during one meeting with
Nicolae Ceaușescu, he expressed his intention to sculpt a life-size bronze statue of
Mihail Sadoveanu, but he did't have enough material to finish his work. To his astonishment, Ceaușescu sent him as a gift a statue of
Joseph Stalin. Under these circumstances, the statue of Stalin shaped by Dumitru Demu was transformed in the statue of Sadoveanu, designed carefully by Irimescu. On 28 October 2005, Irimescu died and was buried in Oprișeni Cemetery. ==Footnotes==