Zurab Tsereteli

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Zurab Konstantinovich Tsereteli (born January 4, 1934) is a Soviet/Russian painter, sculptor, and architect known for large-scale and at times controversial monuments.

Since 1997, Tsereteli has been President of the Russian Academy of Arts.

Life

Zurab Konstantinovich Tsereteli was born in Tbilisi on January 4th, 1934. Tsereteli is a student at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, graduating in 1958. He married Inessa Andronikashvili, a princess from a wealthy Georgian family with a patrilineal lineage back to Byzantine Emperor Andronikos I Komnenos in the same year.

Tsereteli worked as a staff artist at the Georgian Academy of Sciences from 1960 to 1973, contributing to research expeditions that in turn inspired his work. Tsereteli was then granted the position of senior master at the University of Tbilisi's Arts Foundation, where he began to experiment with bronze, stone, glass, wood, and mosaics, as well as designing group commissions for public buildings.

He made his first trip to France in 1964. He stayed in Paris for three months, during which time he visited Pablo Picasso in his studio. His later creative creation was influenced by this experience. He became acquainted with Marc Chagall and other Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists at a later stage, whose distinctive influences can also be seen in the artist's work.

Following his return home, Tsereteli became the head designer of Soviet resorts on the Black Sea, such as Pitsunda (1967) and Adler (1972). He created monumental sculpture, architectural setting, and three-dimensional mosaic compositions in these series. Tsereteli was named Honoured Artist of Georgia after completing the project in Pitsunda in 1967.

Tsereteli's 1970s and 1980s' Tbilisi, Ulyanovsk, Yalta, and other towns commissioned by the government. Tsereteli has also created several Soviet embassies and consulates around the globe during this period, including those in Brazil, Portugal, and Japan.

Tsereteli was invited to lecture painting at the College at Brockport, New York, from 1978 to 1979. During his stay at the Drake Memorial Library, he created and presented two public sculptures on behalf of the people of the United StatesSR, including Proto and Knowledge of the World. The latter was created in honour of the 1979 Special Olympics held in Brockport and the International Year of the Child.

Tsereteli was appointed as the head designer for the XII Summer Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980. He completed A Hymn to Man in 2007, which stands atop the Izmailovo Hotel Complex's Concert and Cinema hall and was awarded the Order of "Friendship of Peoples" during the Olympics. He began teaching at his alma mater, the Tbilisi Academy of Arts in 1981.

He founded Friendship Forever in Moscow's Tishinskaya Square (1983), which was dedicated to the common cause between Georgia and Russia in 1983. Andrey Voznesensky conceived the monument's architectural portion. Tsereteli began work on two large-scale projects in Tbilisi: the monument to Saint Nina (1988-1994) and the History of Georgia complex (1985-1994). Tsereteli was elected an Academic of the US Academy of Arts in 1988, and his sculpture piece Break the Wall of Distrust was installed on Canon Street, London. Good Defeats Evil, Tsereteli's version of St. George slaying the dragon as an allegory for world peace in the modern age, was unveiled at the United Nations Headquarters in 1990.

Tsereteli continued to work on public commissions for the city of Moscow in the 1990s, which some claim was due to his personal friendship with the mayor, Yuri Luzhkov. The most notable of these initiatives include: the restoration of Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Manege Square, the War Memorial Complex in Poklonnaya Gora, the Moscow Zoo, as well as the 98 million-square-meter Peter the Great, which has sparked mixed reactions among Moscow's citizens.

In 1995, the New Man's Birth was announced in Seville, Spain, in honor of Christopher Columbus's discovery of the New World. In 1996, Marbella received a sculpture titled Victory.

Tsereteli was elected President of the Russian Academy of Arts in 1997. He founded the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 1995, and it opened in 1999, becoming the country's first state museum entirely dedicated to modern and contemporary art. In 1998, Tsereteli held his first solo exhibition at the New Manege, which was dedicated to his wife, Inessa. This exhibition became the centerpiece of his numerous traveling shows, which followed in the 2000s, Georgia, Latvia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Bulgaria, Bulgaria, Bulgaria, Bulgaria, Italy, Bulgaria, China, and Japan.

The Gallery of Arts of Zurab Tsereteli in Moscow opened in 2001 as part of the Russian Academy of Arts' museums and exhibitions complex. Tsereteli's monument to the Struggle Against World Terrorism, also known as the Tear of Grief, was unveiled in Bayonne, NJ, in 2006. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Russia gave the US a cash donation to show support and love for the American people.

Tsereteli became the UNESCO Ambassador of Good Will in 2007. He was elected Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (Austria), a French National Order of Honor Chevalier of the National Order of Honor, as well as a 1st Rank Order "For Services to the Motherland" by the Russian Federation in 2009-10. In 2011, he received two awards from the Roman Academy of Fine Arts: the “For Life in Art” Award and the International Giuseppe Sciacca Award for important contribution to the arts. Tsereteli received the UNESCO Five Continents Medal in 2014 for his contribution to world culture, and in 2015, she was named a Member of the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts.

In 2005, Russia donated Holocaust to Israel and opened a new one in Jerusalem. In Rome, he sculptured Nikolai Gogol (2002), Honoré de Balzac (2003), Maria Tsvetaeva (2005), Founding Fathers of the European Union (2012) in Lorraine, and the monument to Pope John Paul II (2014) facing the Seine are among his works.

In 2012, Zurab Tsereteli founded the Museum of Modern Art in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Tsereteli, who serves as President of the Russian Academy of Arts, hosts regular exhibitions by Georgian and international artists at the Museum of Modern Art in Tbilisi, as well as continuing to produce artwork.

Tsereteli received the highest state order of Serbia for his contribution to the interior decoration of the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, for which the Russian Academy has been the main contractor.

Source

Honours and awards

• Hero of Socialist Labour, Order of Lenin and Gold medal "Hammer and Sickle" (11 November 1990) - for his great personal contribution to the development of Soviet art and productive social activities
• Order of Merit for the Fatherland;
  • 1st class (26 July 2010) - for outstanding contribution to the development of fine arts and many years of creative activity
  • 2nd class (4 January 2006) - for outstanding contribution to the development of fine arts
  • 3rd class (29 April 1996) - for his great personal contribution to the development and successful completion of a complex of works on the Victory Monument, Poklonnaya Hill, Moscow
• Order of Friendship of Peoples (1994)
• People's Artist of the Russian Federation (4 January 1994) - for great achievements in the field of fine arts
• People's Artist of the USSR (1980)
• People's Artist of Georgia (1978)
• Russian Federation State Prize in Literature and Art (21 June 1996) - a memorial "Monument of Victory in Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" on Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow
• Lenin Prize (1976) - for the space-decorations Children's Zone a resort town in Adler (1973)
• USSR State Prize
  • 1970 - for the mosaic composition of Lenin memorial in Ulyanovsk (1969) and in the Palace of Trade Unions Tbilisi (1969–1970)
  • 1982 - for participation in the creation of the hotel complex "Izmailovo" in Moscow (1980)
• Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (France, 2010)
• Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters (France, 2005)
• Medal "Astana" (Kazakhstan, 11 December 1998)
• Badge "For Services to Moscow" (Moscow, 30 December 2003) - for his great personal contribution to the development of fine art, many years of fruitful activity for the city and the Muscovites
• Order of Akhmad Kadyrov (Chechnya, 2005) - for his personal contribution to the commemoration of the first president of the Chechen Republic, the Hero of Russia Akhmad-Hadji Kadyrov, activities that promote peace, friendship and cooperation between peoples
• Medal "In Praise of Ossetia" (North Ossetia, 2010)