Matvei Manizer

Matvei Manizer (1891–1966), Socialist Realist sculptor, teacher. Studied in St Petersburg and taught sculpture in Leningrad and Moscow. Sculpted monuments and decorated Moscow underground stations. Honoured Artist of the RSFSR, People's Artist of the RSFSR, People's Artist of the USSR.
Born: 1891, St Petersburg
Died: 1966, Moscow
Movements:
Socialist Realism

Sculptor, draughtsman, teacher, writer. Born in St Petersburg (1891) in the family of Baltic painter Heinrich Maniser (1847–1925). Studied under Matvei Chizhov at the primary school of the Baron Stieglitz Central School of Technical Drawing (1899–1908), Vasily Savinsky at the Baron Stieglitz Central School of Technical Drawing (1908–09), Ivan (Jean) Andreoletti at the School of Drawing of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (1909–11) and Hugo Salemann and Vladimir Beklemishev at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1911–16). Studied in parallel at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St Petersburg University (1909–14) and at Petrograd Conservatoire (1919–20). Headed an agitprop sculpture studio in Moscow (1920) and taught sculpture at the VKhUTEMAS/VKhUTEIN in Petrograd/Leningrad (1921–29), Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad (1935–41), Ilya Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad (1945–47), Moscow Institute of Applied and Decorative Art (1946–52) and the Vasily Surikov Institute of Art in Moscow (1952–66). Member of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (1926). Married his student Elena Janson (1926) and had a son called Hugo (1927). Professor (1935), doctor of art history (1939). Chairman of the Leningrad branch of the Union of Artists (1937–41), member of the Communist Party (from 1941). Sculpted monuments to Karl Marx in Kaluga (1921), Vladimir Volodarsky in Leningrad (1925), Vladimir Lenin in Samara (1925), Petrozavodsk (1933), Minsk (1934) and Ulyanovsk (1940), Dmitry Mendeleyev in Leningrad (1928), Victims of Bloody Sunday in Leningrad (1931), Vasily Chapayev in Samara (1932), Taras Shevchenko in Kharkiv (1935), Kiev (1938) and Kaniv (1939), Sergei Kirov in Petrozavodsk (1936) and Kirovohrad (1937), Alexander Pushkin at the Black River in Leningrad (1937) and Detskoe Selo Railway Station in Pushkin (1940s), Valerian Kuibyshev in Kuibyshev (1938), Fyodor Kharitonov in Rybinsk (1943), Ivan Pavlov in Ryazan (1949), Mikhail Kalinin in Leningrad (1955) and Ilya Repin in Chuhuiv (1956), Repino (1957) and Moscow (1958), statues and busts of Joseph Stalin (1937, 1938, 1946, 1949, 1950), including Stalin’s death mask (1953), bronze statue of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya (1942) and bronze figures for Moscow underground stations Ploschad Revolyutsii (1936–39), Elektrozavodskaya (1944) and Izmailovsky Park (1944). Wrote two volumes of books about his work as a sculptor (1940–52). Moved to Moscow (1941), where he lived on 1st Street of the Eighth of March (1951–66). Honoured Artist of the RSFSR (1933), Belorussian SSR (1933) and Ukrainian SSR (1935). People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1943), People’s Artist of the USSR (1958). Winner of the Stalin Prize (1941, 1943, 1950), vice-president of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1947–66). Died in Moscow and buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery (1966) with a gravestone of his own design (1971). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1913), including My Collection by the Elena Zenina Gallery of Arts in the Central House of the Artist at 10 Krymsky Val in Moscow (2011).

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