The statue of Avram Iancu commemorates the Romanian revolutionary born in 1824. Iancu was one of the leaders of the Romanian movement during the 1848/49 Transylvanian Revolution. With his rebel troops, he controlled the Apuseni Mountains, his home region, where, with Austrian support, he fought against the Hungarian anti-Habsburg uprising.
After the unification of Transylvania with Romania in 1918, and especially in the 1970s and 1980s, Avram Iancu was credited with playing an important role in Romanian historiography as a Romanian national hero who successfully defended himself against Hungarian hegemonic aspirations. Even after the 1989 revolution, Avram Iancu monuments were erected in Transylvanian cities with large Hungarian populations, intended to underpin the legitimacy of the Romanian claim to Transylvania.
The equestrian statue in Târgu Mureș was created by the sculptor Florin Codre and inaugurated in 1978.