Monumental artist, sculptor, and president of the Russian Academy of Arts, Zurab Tsereteli, has passed away at the age of 91, Tsereteli’s assistant, Sergei Shagulashvili, told Interfax.
“Yes, it happened today at half past one in the morning,” the agency’s source said.
He added that decisions regarding the farewell and burial will be made later.
Tsereteli was a Soviet, Georgian, and Russian monumental artist, sculptor, painter, and educator. Since 1997, he served as the president of the Russian Academy of Arts. He held the titles of People's Artist of the USSR and of the Russian Federation and was a full recipient of the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland.”
He was born on January 4, 1934, in Tbilisi. He founded the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (1995), the Zurab Tsereteli Art Gallery at the Russian Academy of Arts (2000), and the Museum of Modern Art in Tbilisi, Georgia (2012).
Tsereteli authored over 5,000 works in painting, graphics, sculpture, and monumental-decorative arts (including frescoes, mosaics, and panels). As a sculptor, he created numerous monuments, among them Eternal Friendship in Moscow, Good Defeats Evil outside the UN headquarters in New York, The Birth of a New Man in Seville, Break the Wall of Distrust in London, the Monument to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya in Ruza, and many others.
