Horia Damian was a Romanian post-war contemporary painter, sculptor, and architect. His early painting consisted of abstract geometrical compositions in pale, delicate colours, and were done most frequently in oil and resin. By the end of the 1950’s, his painting had taken on a gestural quality. In the 1960’s, Damian suddenly changed his technique entirely with the construction of a wooden relief pyramid. From then on, his artistic practice was dominated by experimentations with architecture, while formally his works became more three-dimensional and monumental. His canvases are often organised in iconographic cycles, which take archetypal architectural elements—such as gates, temples, pyramids, capitals, and pediments—as their focus. Damian's pieces have been part of many exhibitions and collections around the world, including in the National Museum of Art, Bucharest; the Musée Fabre, Montpellier; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The Venice Biennale; documenta, Kassel; the Grand Palais, Paris; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro; Neue Galerie, Aachen; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Bridgestone Museum, Tokyo; and the Leo Castelli Gallery.

During Damian’s time in Paris, he experimented with naturalistic and cubist forms to develop a wholly original abstract style, which is evident in Mandala City. This piece uses precise lines and contrasts to feature a mysterious architectural object, the “city” at the painting’s centre, which appears isolated and yet firmly rooted within the universe around it.