Zurab Tsereteli

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Zurab Tsereteli (left) with Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Tsereteli's 96-meter-tall statue of Peter the Great on the Moskva Riverbank is one of the tallest in the world.

Zurab Tsereteli (Georgian: ზურაბ წერეთელი; Russian: Зураб Константинович Церетели; born January 4, 1934 in Georgia) is a Russo-Georgian painter, sculptor and architect who graduated from the Academy of Arts in Tbilisi. He is best known for the statues of Christopher Columbus in Puerto Rico and Peter the Great in downtown Moscow which, at 100 and 96 meters respectively, are the second and third tallest statues in the world.

Tsereteli was appointed professor in the Russian Academy of Arts (of which he later was elected a president) and president of the Foundation for the Children's Park of Miracles in Moscow, Russia in 1988. Later he founded the Moscow International Foundation for Support to UNESCO.

Tsereteli created a sculpture using sections of scrapped US Pershing and Soviet SS-20 nuclear missiles. The sculpture, entitled 'Good Defeats Evil' is on the grounds of the UN building in New York City. The sculpture is a 39 foot high, 40 ton monumental bronze statue of St George fighting the dragon of nuclear war. It was donated to the UN by the Soviet Union in 1990. Enamel pieces modeled after the sculpture are available from the Cold War Museum.

He was elected vice-president of the Russian Academy of Creative Endeavors and the president of the International Center of Design in 1993, as well as president of the International Academy of Information Science in 1994. He was appointed as UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador 30 March 1996.

After protests by citizens in 1997, his 94 meter bronze monument to Peter the Great was moved from St Petersburg and installed on the Yakimanskaya embankment of Moscow. Some of Moscow’s art critics disdainfully refer to it as “Moscow’s Godzilla.”

He has also been involved with other works in Moscow, including the reconstruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the Manege Square ensemble and the War Memorial Complex on Poklonnaya Gora. His Tear of Grief (actually titled "To the Struggle Against World Terrorism") features a 40-foot teardrop suspended in the fissure of a 106-foot bronze rectangular tower. The monument will include the names of all the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania, as well as the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. It is currently under construction in Bayonne, New Jersey (after nearby Jersey City first accepted then declined the free monument) with the intended dedication date of Sept. 11, 2006.

Tsereteli is currently developing a park in St. Petersburg to commemorate the city's 300th anniversary.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} It will include 74 life size busts of Russian tsars and princes and several other fountains and sculptures. He is also reportedly involved with the construction of Disneyland in Russia.

References

External links

http://www.tsereteli.ru/ - the artists official site
[Artwork by Zurab Tsereteli at The Cold War Museum]
[Good Defeats Evil] at the New York Public Art Curriculum

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