Ernst Neizvestny

Sculptor whose innovative work was reviled as “filth” in his native Soviet Union

IN 1962 he famously clashed with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who called his bold, modernist art “dog shit” and “degenerate”. But Ernst Neizvestny, who has died in New York aged 91,was finally rehabilitated and hailed as “one of the greatest sculptors of our time” by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Despite his fractious relationship with the Soviet Union, which he had left for self-imposed exile in the US in 1976, Neizvestny was very much a product of the Revolution. Khrushchev may have complained that he disfigured “the faces of Soviet people” but his powerful, brutalist sculptures owed as much to Socialist Realism as to Expressionism and the work of Henry Moore.

The 1962 confrontation between Khrushchev and Neizvestny at an exhibition celebrating the Soviet Artists’ Union in Moscow pitted two strong personalities against one another: plain-speaking party-leader Khrushchev and fearless, charismatic artist and iconoclast Neizvestny.

He responded to Khrushchev’s barrage of insults by telling the premier he was “illiterate when it came to aesthetics”. Khrushchev rebutted: “Inside you are an angel and a devil. If the devil wins, we’ll crush you. If the angel wins, we’ll do all we can to help you.” In the end the two men shook hands and went their separate ways.

They both fell foul of the system: Khrushchev was ousted three years later while Neizvestny, thrown out of the Artists’ Union, found himself unofficially ostracised. Work was increasingly difficult to come by and when in 1966 he entered a Soviet-sponsored competition to build a monument for the Aswan Dam, he did so anonymously. He won. In 1971 he received another Ernst Neizvestny: rehabilitated sculptor who had sparred with Kruschev unexpected commission. His old sparring partner Khrushchev had died and his family wanted him to design a monument for his grave at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Neizvestny created a bronze effigy of Khrushchev encased in white marble one side and black granite on the other, to represent the former party leader’s own light and dark sides.

Ernst Iosifovich Neizvestny was born in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg) in the Urals to Iosif, a prominent pediatric surgeon, and Bella Dizhur, a biochemist and acclaimed Sephardi poet and children’s author. It is believed his father had changed his name to Neizvestny, (which means “unknown” in Russian), to hide the fact that he had fought in the White Army against the Reds.

Ernst Neizvestny attended a school for artistic children in Leningrad and at 17 joined the Red Army as a volunteer. In 1945 he was heavily wounded and his mother was notified of his death. He was awarded the prestigious Order of the Red Star “posthumously” — but he had survived.

In 1947 he enrolled in the Riga Academy of Fine Arts, followed by the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow. In 1955 having joined the Moscow branch of the Soviet Artists’ Union, he was now a fully fledged member of the Soviet art establishment.

But his independent spirit and constant willingness to challenge the official definition of good Soviet art set him on a collision course with the conservatives in the Artists’ Union, widely believed to have been behind his clash with Khrushchev. The event marked the beginning of the end for cultural experimentation and Neizvestny found himself increasingly sidelined.

Although he secured the odd commission, such as the 1976 Prometheus for the Artek Pioneer Camp in Crimea, unspoken official opposition denied him solo exhibitions. Frustrated, in 1976 he went into voluntary exile in New York where he worked from a studio in SoHo and soon became a leading figure in the émigré art community. He also established a “sculpture park” near his home in Shelter Island.

Freed from the constraints of the rigid Soviet system, he now gave free rein to his penchant for huge monumental work and created some of his best-known sculptures, such as the 1996 Mask of Sorrow commemorating the victims of the gulag, appropriately located in the Siberian town of Magadan. He also brought to fruition his

concept, first envisioned in 1956. In 2004 he “planted” it in the foyer of the Bagration pedestrian bridge in Moscow. The theme of the seven-metrehigh sculpture was one close to Neizvestny’s heart, the struggle between good and evil, with good prevailing.

The angry young man who had challenged the Soviet system’s concept of art was now reconciled with the new Russia. His 1994 figurine even became the model for the TEFI statuette, the Russian equivalent of the BAFTA television awards.

In his 2000 work the Archangel Michael points to a shoot emerging from the stone, widely seen as a symbol of the new, powerful Russia.

Neizvestny’s death prompted an outpouring of tributes on Russian television with Putin calling it “a grievous loss for Russia’s culture and world culture as a whole”.

Ernst Neizvestny’s first marriage to Dina Mukhina ended in divorce. He subsequently married Anna Graham. She survives him, together with a daughter from his first marriage, Olga; a stepdaughter Olivia Graham; and his sister Liudmila Lifson. Ernst Neizvestny: born April 9, 1925; died August 9, 2016