Zurab K. TSereteli, a Georgian-Russian artist whose towering monuments and heroic statues were pleased to the Kremlin authorities, but aroused contempt from Moscow to New Jersey, died on Tuesday in his home outside Moscow. He was 91 years old.
His death was announced by Sergei Shagulashvili, his assistant. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sent a note of condolences to the family of Mr. Tsereteli, calling him “an exceptional representative of multinational Russian culture”.
An admirer of Mr. Putin, Mr. Tsereteli, revealed his imposing bronze statue in 2004, dressed in a tunic of Judo Law. (The work was so scarcely received, however, that he remained with Mr. Tsereteli in his gallery.)
The exuberant work of TSereteli has largely defined the post-Soviet Russian aesthetic. Flamboyant and lively, he was able to enchant the geopolitical boundaries in earning the position of unofficial court artist in the Kremlin in the 90s while he also worked with the government of his native Georgia while trying to distance himself from Moscow.
In Georgia, where many premises condemn him to remain in Russia, he built the monument to freedom in Tbilisi, the capital, which replaced a statue of Vladimir Lenin in the main square after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In Russia, Mr. Tsereteli led teams that created some of the largest post-Soviet monuments in the country, reporting a deviation from the geometric style of the Communist era in favor of colorful Kitsch Capitalisti-Fino to the disappointment of most of the Moscow intelligence.
In the 90s, he contributed to presenting the face of a new fly by designing the first underground shopping center in western style of the country, in Manege Square, near the Kremlin. Some said the shopping center, his roof adorned with fairytale bright stickers, had ruined the square forever.
Later he was in charge of creating, as an official gift from Russia to the United States, a monument dedicated to the victims of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The monument, a 10 -storey bronze, at the bronze level divided by a fixture with an immense tear in nickel inside, was to be erected in the bronze city, but in 2004, a municle, with an immense tear in Nichel. A local artistic society described the work as “a piece of insensitive and self-exhilarating pompousness”. It was finally installed in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 2006.
The colossal bronze statue of Mr. Tsereteli by Christopher Columbus in Puerto Rico also aroused criticism, both for its aesthetic and for its historical context. Located off the path beaten along the northern coast and increased by 350 feet – the highest statue of the western hemisphere – the monument has a columbus towering standing on the bridge of a smaller sail ship, one hand on the wheel of the ship and the other raised to the sky, with three ship ships behind him.
Some called him a punch in the eye when he was completed in 2016. And many Puerto Ricers opposed his presence, citing violence against native populations during Columbus's time in the Caribbean.
Mr. Tsereteli had originally wanted to give the monument to the United States in 1992, to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the Americas. But every American city that has approached, including New York, Boston, Miami and Columbus, Ohio, they refused it.
The large statues of TSeretoli have been erected elsewhere all over the world, also to the United Nations in New York and London, Rome and Tokyo. In the trial he has forged personal connections abroad. He knew President Trump, with whom he shared the love for pump and grandeur. Speaking with the New Yorker magazine in 1997, Trump called Mr. Tsereteli “greater and legitimate”.
The fame of Tsereteli reached its climax in 1997, when he installed a bright statue 321 feet that glorified Peter the Great in the middle of Moscow, a city that Peter did not like. Similar to the Columbus monument, the piece puts a peter with an imperial -looking in a ship -sized sailing ship with its tree and the sails that got up behind him.
The public rebelled. People signed petitions, accusing Mr. Tsereteli of Sapore. The city was plastered with stickers who cried, “Down with the Tsar!” A left -wing marginal group said he planned to blow up the monument.
But after the death of Mr. Tsereteli, even the referees of good taste, who made fashion insulting his work, began to sing his praises. Some praised him as a careful administrator who has defended and helped many artists in difficulty, financially or something else. Others said that while his huge statues were overbearing, his paintings and drawings showed a more elegant and tender side of his talent.
“He was a truly gifted artist,” wrote Grigory Revzin, a Russian critic, in a obituary in Kommersant, a daily Russian company. “He had a phenomenal sense of color and was mainly a painter.”
Marat Guelman, a Russian gallery owner and a long -standing opponent of Mr. Tsereteli, said that while his sculptures were “hateful and tasteless”, he was still an important figure in Russian art whose legacy would last.
“Today we understand that this was not the worst thing that could happen to us”, Mr. Gelman, a former Kremlin doctor who became a vocal critic of it and left Russia, wrote in a post on Facebook.
In 1999, Tsereteli founded the Moscow Moscow Moscow, a vibrant institution – currently led by his nephew Vasily Tsereteli – which hosts a collection of important Russian works. The museum has mounted shows that highlight Russian artists and retrospective exhibitions in honor of leading artists whose works were prohibited during the Soviet period.
Mr. Tsereteli also founded a modern art museum in Tbilisi. Thursday and Friday, hundreds of people went there to pay their last respects. He was buried in the capital on Saturday, in the Pantheon of Didibe, together with his wife, Andronikashvili, and many Georgian cultural characters.
In Moscow, a farewell ceremony was held on Wednesday to Christ our Savior, the main Orthodox cathedral of the country. Mr. Tsereteli had helped to decorate him in the 90s.
Zurab Konstantinovich Tsereteli was born on January 4, 1934 in Tbilisi, when Georgia was part of the Soviet Union. He graduated from Tbilisi Academy of Arts in 1958 and 1960 began working as a staff artist at the Georgian Academy of Sciences, taking part in many research shipments.
In 1964, he went to Paris, where he met Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso and discovered that an artist can make not only paintings but also sculptures and works in porcelain and ceramics. On his return to the Soviet Union, he began to decorate resorts on the Black Sea with colorful fountains dressed in mosaic, bus stops and playing fields that helped to give the splashy flavor.
For most of his career, Tsereteli has thrived for the official commissions of the Soviet and Russian political elite. In the 70s and 80s, he carried out design works for the Soviet Embassies and the summer house of the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev on the Black Sea. He was appointed chief artist of the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow.
In the 90s, growing near the mayor Yuri Luzhkov of Moscow, Tsereteli worked on several projects in the city, including the Giant Victory Park, one of the first construction projects of the nation of modern Russia. He was elected president of the Russian Academy of Art in 1997.
He survived his daughter, Yelena; three grandchildren; And many prones.