Sculptor Ernst Neizvestny and his works

On April 9, world-renowned sculptor Ernst Neizvestny marks his 85th birthday. Photo: Neizvestny and his daughter Olga in 2008.

Neizvestny was a student at the Sverdlovsk’s art school for gifted children until 1942. In 1943, he joined the Red Army as a volunteer.

In the April of 1945, Neizvestny was heavily wounded in Austria, pronounced dead and “posthumously” awarded the Order of the Red Star, which he received 25 years later.

After the war, Neizvestny taught drawing at the Suvorov Military School in Sverdlovsk and later continued his education at the Surikov Moscow Art Institute and Moscow State University. Photo: Neizvestny sculpting his Monument for All the World’s Children.

During the early 1950s, Neizvestny created the “War Is…” and “Robots and Semi-Robots” sculpture series, as well as a series of drawing albums entitled Gigantomachy, or the Battle of Giants.

In 1956, the sculptor began work on The Tree of Life, a grandiose monument symbolizing the union of art and science and called by Neizvestny the project of his lifetime.

In October 2004, the sculptor installed his Tree of Life on Moscow’s Bagration pedestrian bridge. The seven-meter-tall sculpture includes such fragments as Christ on the cross, the Möbius strip, portraits of Buddha and Yury Gagarin, as well as the theme of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from paradise and esoteric symbols.

Throughout his career, Neizvestny has created sculpture installations adorning many cities round the world. Photo: Prometheus, a welded aluminum sculpture by Neizvestny displayed at the Soviet pavilion during the Electro-72 international exhibition.

In 1996, the sculptor finished the Mask of Sorrow, a grandiose monument to the victims of Stalinist repressions installed in Magadan. The 15-meter tall sculpture of 56 square meters has a replication of a prison cell inside and a wind bell in its upper left corner. The back of the statue portrays a man on a cross and a weeping young woman. The monument’s front area has 11 stone markers bearing the names of Kolyma’s most terrible forced labor camps, such as Butugychag, Elgen, Serpan and others.

Ernst Neizvestny has been awarded the Medal Commemorating 50 Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 3rd Class, the Order of Honor, and the Russian State Prize. The sculptor currently lives and works in New York.