(Reuters) – Zurab Tsereteli, a Russian-Georgian sculptor, painter and architect known for his large-scale and sometimes divisive works, has died aged 91, Russian state news agency TASS reported on Tuesday.
Rising to prominence in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, Tsereteli became known for his monumental projects, and later for his closeness to parts of the Russian political elite.
In 2004, he told Reuters that Vladimir Putin’s “healthy soul” had inspired him to do a bronze study of the Russian president.
A friendship with former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov saw him commissioned to produce an enormous monument to Tsar Peter the Great that stands in central Moscow. He also took a key role in the reconstruction of the city’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which had been destroyed under Stalin in 1931.
In a post on the Telegram messenger app, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called Tsereteli “an artist of world renown, a public figure who knew no boundaries or obstacles in strengthening peace and supporting creativity”.
Other Tsereteli works include monuments to the discovery of the Americas in Seville, Spain, and in Puerto Rico, and the enormous Chronicle of Georgia monument in his hometown of Tbilisi.
One of his sculptures, the ten-storey Tear of Grief, was presented to the U.S. by the Russian government as a memorial to the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks. It stands in New Jersey.
(Reporting by Felix Light; Editing by Peter Graff)
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