Ernst Iosipovich Neizvestny

(Russian/American, 1926-2016)

Centaure/ Centaur height without base: 30 cm (1 13/16 in).

Footnotes

Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist
Private collection, Italy

Ernst Neizvestny was born in 1925. In 1942, at the age of 17, he joined the Red Army as a volunteer. At the end of the Second World War he was heavily wounded – despite surviving his mother received an official notification of his death, and Neizvestny was awarded the Order of the Red Star "posthumously". His sculptures, often based on the human form, are noted for their expressionism and are frequently as tortured as they are powerful. At the Moscow Manege exhibition of 1962, then First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, derided Neizvestny's works as "degenerate" and questioned, "Why do you disfigure the faces of Soviet people?". Neizvestny's would later be approached by Khrushchev's family to design Khrushchev's tomb at the Novodevichy Cemetery. Much of Neizvestny's art from the Soviet era was destroyed before he was forcibly exiled to the United States in 1976. Perhaps his most famous surviving work created during the Soviet period is his sculpture Prometheus (1966) in Artek.
In 1965, the Grosvenor Gallery in London opened an exhibition of works by the then unknown young Soviet sculptor Ernst Neizvestny entitled Drawing for Sculpture. The gallery, then run by the famous sociologist, writer and art collector Eric Estorick (1913-1993), showcased works by the most important European artists – including Marc Chagall, René Magritte, Pablo Picasso, El Lissitzky, and Alexander Archipenko. Drawing for Sculpture was the first exhibition of Neizvestny's work ever held outside of the Soviet Union. In an article entitled "Russian Drawings Cut East-West Barriers", The Daily Telegraph reported that Neizvestny graphic works were "overflowing with energy" and revealed an extraordinary artistic talent.
Speaking of his works on paper, Neizvestny claimed; "I use graphic works to develop ideas, but I find real satisfaction in graphic speed, ease and freedom. My drawings are independent and an end in themselves."