As Romania entered World War I in 1916, Ion Theodorescu-Sion was forced to interrupt his work on the Constanța murals. Once drafted into the Romanian Land Forces, he returned to official and academic art: he was employed by Chief of Staff Dumitru Iliescu to depict the Romanian Armed Forces in action. Sion witnessed (and painted) the subsequent storming of the Romanian front by the Central Powers, and joined the exodus of Romanian soldiers and civil authorities into the eastern region of Moldavia. He was in Iași, the provisional capital, where he began collaborating with other war artists driven away by the defeats. In 1918, Sion joined them as they broke with "Tinerimea", creating the new artistic forum "Arta Română" ("Romanian Art")—Ressu, Nicolae Tonitza, Ștefan Dimitrescu and Oscar Han were among the other main affiliates.