Lazar Gadayev

Sculptor, graphic artist, poet, writer. Born in the family of a collective farmer and amateur wood carver called Tazi Gadati in the village of Surkh-Digora near Ordzhonikidze (now Vladikavkaz) in North Ossetia (1938). Studied at the Faculty of Art of the North Ossetian Pedagogical College in Ordzhonikidze (1956–60) and under Matvei Manizer and Dmitry Zhilinsky at the Vasily Surikov Institute of Art in Moscow (1960–66). Member of the Union of Artists (1966). Worked for the Moscow Experimental Sculptural Combine (from 1968). Designed monuments to Georgy Maliev in Vladikavkaz (1986), Tembot Kerashev in Maikop (1990), Alexander Pushkin in Moscow (1999) and Osip Mandelstam in Voronezh (2008). Contributed a sculpture of runners to the Olympic Park in Seoul (1988) and published a book of poems and short stories called Talent in the Digorian dialect of the Ossetian language (1989). Artistic director of the Soviet-American Ceramic Symposium in Dzintari in Latvia (1991). Awarded the medal To the Glory of Ossetia (2008). Died in Moscow and buried at the Troekurovo Cemetery in Moscow (2008). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1967), including the International Small Sculpture Exhibition in Budapest (1978, medal), exhibitions of Moscow artists in New Delhi (1982) and Sofia (1986), joint exhibitions with Natalia Nesterova in Moscow (1989, 1993), Munich (1993), Ulyanovsk (2000), Saratov (2000), Samara (2000) and Volgograd (2000), one-man shows at the Makharbek Tuganov North Ossetian Museum of Art in Vladikavkaz (1985), Studio Giorgio Marconi in Milan (1988), Galerie Martin in Sissach (1999, 2000), Our Heritage Magazine Exhibition Hall in Moscow (1995) and Victor Sorokin Museum of Art in Lipetsk (2006), retrospective at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow (2008) and posthumous shows at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow (2009), Alexander Radischev Museum of Art in Samara (2010) and Union of Artists in Voronezh (2012).