Biography
His most monumental works of Soviet, and then the Russian sculptor Ernst Unknown created in the United States. The master loved the native country, after emigration, the cult monuments like "crazy masks" in Yekaterinburg, just the country did not appreciate it. The name of Ernst Unknown is familiar not to everyone, but his work is common: the laureates of the "Teffi" premium still give the statuette of the Orpheus made according to the sketches of the sculptor.Childhood and youth
Ernst Iosifovich An unknown person was born on April 9, 1925 in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg) in the family of otorinolaryngologist Joseph Moiseevich and Soviet poetess Bella Abramovna divine. Ernsta Iosifovich's childhood took place calmly, without takeoffs and falls. He studied at school No. 16 of Sverdlovsk, did not receive high estimates, as well as low. All because the boy gave preference to art, and not "boring" natural sciences.
In 1939, an unknown person first presented the work of the public, taking part in the All-Union competition of children's creativity. He came up with something new for exposure every year until admission to the secondary art school at the All-Russian Academy of Arts in 1942.
In August 1942, 17-year-old Ernst Unknown was taken to study at the machine-gun military school of Turkmenistan. The year it took the young man for the development of new knowledge, and in October 1943 he was headed by the younger lieutenant to the airborne troops just formed the 4th Ukrainian Front.
In March 1944, an unknown person became the commander of the rifle platoon of the 86th Guards Rifle Division of the 5th Shock Army. The future sculptor was not sitting in the trench, showed courage and courage during the storming of Budapest. Once Ernst Iosifovich received a document in which it was stated that he killed 16 people in a hand-to-hand battle.
"I became scary, I do not remember this. I remember, I then thought: "We must fight, you have to fight. There is no other way out. And where is death? ". At the front I had a feeling of immortality, "I recalled an unknown newspaper Kommersant in an interview.Already at the order of the Great Patriotic War, an unknown person got the hard injury and almost broke up with life. On April 22, 1945, 17 days before the surrender of Nazi Germany, the future brewer was on the operating table in Austria. It had 3 intervertebral discs, and the pleural cavity was filled with air.
The young man survived 7 the strokes of the diaphragm, the complete stitching of the lungs, but as a result was declared dead. For courage shown in battle, unknown "posthumously" awarded the Order of the Red Star (which man received 25 years later) and the medal "for the courage."
The life of a young soldier saved a field doctor who noticed that Ernst Iosifovich breathes. After a number of complex operations, the patient's condition stabilized. True, another 3 years after the war, an unknown walked on crutches, barely moving with an interrupted spine, experienced pains who drowned only morphine, stuttered. However, even these terrible injuries could not in the youth separated by an unknown with art.
Creation
In 1946-1947, the crippled unknown was compiled by knowledge missed for the war at the Academy of Arts in Riga, then entered the Moscow Art Institute. V. I. Surikova. Here, an unknown person received the first major order - the design of the exposition in the Memorial Museum of Ya. M. Sverdlova (now - the State Museum of Yekaterinburg). For the exhibition, the student made the burner "Yakov Sverdlov calls on the Ural workers to an armed uprising" and the composition "Yakov Sverdlov introduces Lenin and Stalin."
The works performed in the naturalistic genre were included in the exhibition, and in the 1970s they tried to throw away. If the museum workers did not hide the images of the securities to the focus, the early unknown would be lost. Since 2009, these 2 works complement the exhibition of the State Museum of Yekaterinburg.
The talent of a former soldier in 1950 appreciated the Tretyakov Gallery, and the prom 5th year of the Kremlin Constructionist Fedor Horse was nominated to the Stalin Prize, subsequently acquired by the Russian Museum.
In the early 1950s, an unknown person, kneading the horrors of the Great Patriotic War, created the cycle "War - this ...", whose apogee was the sculpture "Dead Soldier" (1957). This image poured out of the bronze is a lying figure with a stupid, almost a sneezing face, the wound gaps in the chest, but the fist is victoriously thrown forward as a symbol of the non-omitance of the Russian soldier.
"Dead soldier" is a small sculpture, but in those years an unknown began to begin to monumental figures. He embodied the idea of the album, which was called "Giantajah, or the Battle of Giants."
An unknown wrestler considered a "tree of life", the work on which began in 1956 and continued in emigration. According to the idea of the sculptor, the heart-shaped monument was to consist of 7 mebius turns, "the inside" would be filled with the figures of children and adults, individual parts of the body, things and symbols.
As of 1998, an unknown person invested in the "Tree of Life" about 800 thousand rubles. From your own pocket. To put the monument mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, opposite the complex of buildings of the Secretariat of the Council of Economic Communications on New Arbat. As a result, in 2004, the "Tree of Life" decorated the shopping and entertainment center "Bridge" Bagration ". In the sculpture, Yuri Gagarin and Buddha, Tape of Möbius, crucifix, plots of expulsion from Paradise are guessed in the sculpture.
Year after year, an unknown person presented sculptures, disliked on the work of Soviet masters: "Suicide" (1958), "Adam" (1962-1963), "Effort" (1962), "Mechanical Man" (1961-1962). Unfortunate figures harmoniously complemented the exhibition of avant-gardeists in Moscow, which was devoted to the 30th anniversary of the Moscow branch of the Union of Artists of the USSR. Among the honored guests was Nikita Khrushchev.
The leader of the Soviet Union Creativity of avant-garders did not appreciate. In obscene expressions, he Oruruga and Ernst Unknown, calling his work "degenerative".
It is assumed that Nikita Khrushchev did not criticize the masters so hard, if he knew that he won the All-Union Competition for the creation of a victory monument in the Great Patriotic War and created illustrations for Roman Fedor Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment". In other words, an unknown stood out against the background of other sculptors and artists. By the way, later engraving Ernst Josefovich decorated the books of Dante Aligiery and Samuel Beckett.
It is noteworthy that Nikita Khrushchev's grave decorates the gravestone invented and embodied by the Unknown at the request of the relatives of the former head of the USSR.
From the beginning of the 1960s before the emigration in 1976, an unknown person created about 850 sculptures - "Strange birth" cycles, "Centaur", "Human Construction", "Crucifix", "masks". For 15 years, it was possible to sell only 4 work from this manifold.
The unknown person did not want to leave the Soviet Union, but the power "stifled" him. In June 1973, the sculptor filed documents for immigration to Israel, and in March 1976, after a 3-year stay in the faults, went through Switzerland in the United States. In 1977 settled in New York.
The most large work of the unknown in the emigration was the monument to the victims of Stalinist repression. The sculptor wondered to create a "triangle of grief" - triptych from memorials in Magadan, Yekaterinburg and Vorkuta. The idea was incarnated in part. The 15-meter monument "Mask Sorrow" appeared in Magadan in 1996. Already after the death of an unknown, in 2017, a 3-meter "Mask of Sorrow: Europe-Asia" has opened in Yekaterinburg, strongly modified compared with the initial sketch. Triptych never added a monument in Vorkuta.
Personal life
Ernsta unknown had 2 wives. The first is Ceramist Dina Petrovna Mukhina. The daughter of Olga was born in marriage, which became an artist.
In the 70th year of life, the sculptor married Anna Graham, a translator. Together they raised daughter Olivia. According to the unknown:
"Anya opened the other side of life, which I practically did not know: to be a husband and be responsible."Previously, the man did not experience the characteristics of the biography, as he suggested himself.
Death
92-year-old Ernst Unknown died on August 9, 2016, after a long illness, in New York. The disclosure of the cause of the death of the sculptor caused unpleasant peresya about his personal life: allegedly Anna Graham came to her husband with the light in recent years.The grave of Ernst Unknown is located on Shelton Island in New York. The funeral took place in the Orthodox Nikolsky Cathedral in Manhattan. According to Felix Komarov's sculptor, a man "asked that no monuments were installed on the grave, and only the Russian Orthodox Cross." Probably the last will of the unknown was fulfilled, but the photo confirming this is not.
Work
- 1962 - "Centaur Claiming"
- 1966 - "Prometheus and Children of the World"
- 1971 - "Lotus Flower"
- 1988 - "Through the wall"
- 1993 - "Man Screaming"
- 1994 - Orpheus
- 1995 - "Gold Child"
- 1996 - "Mask Sorrow"
- 2000 - "Revival"
- 2004 - "Tree of Life"
- 2017 - "Mask Sorrow: Europe-Asia"