The bust of Rabindranath Tagore. Work by Soviet sculptor Zair Azgur (1908-1995). Granite, 1956, the hall of the National Art Museum of Belarus

Soviet sculptor Zair Azgur
Academician of the USSR Academy of Arts (1958), Corresponding Member (1947), Hero of Socialist Labor (1978), People’s Artist of the USSR (1973), Azgur was the winner of two Stalin Prize of the second degree (1946, 1948), and member of the Communist Party since 1943. His works are in the collections of the National Art Museum, the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, Memorial Museum – workshop of Zair Isaakovich Azgur (Minsk, Belarus), the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), the Astrakhan Regional Picture gallery (Astrakhan, Russian Federation), the art museum of Moldova and others.
Zair Azgur was born on 2 January 1908 in the village of Molchany of Mogilev province (now Vitebsk region of Byelorussia), into a Jewish family. He graduated from the Vitebsk Art Practical Institute in 1925, his teachers were Y. Pen and MA Kerzin. In 1925-1928 Zair studied at Higher Artistic – Technical Institute in Leningrad; Art Institute of Kiev and Tbilisi Academy of Fine Arts (1928-1929).

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Marx’s head. The model of the monument for the DDR. 1969. Gypsum. Soviet sculptor Lev Kerbel (7 November 1917 – August 14, 2003, Moscow

Soviet sculptor Lev Kerbel was the Professor, Academician, and Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Arts from 1988 to 2003. He was the People’s Artist of the USSR (1977), Hero of Socialist Labor (1985), winner of the Lenin Prize (1961) and the first degree of the Stalin Prize (1950). Member of the CPSU since 1963, Lev Efimovich Kerbel – author of more than 50 monuments and memorials installed in the USSR and overseas. He created a large number of statues of prominent figures of the Communist Party, Soviet politicians, generals, heroes of the Soviet Union and Socialist Labor. Together with the vice-president of the Academy of Arts M. Manizer Kerbel executed death mask of Stalin.
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Portrait of Tchaikovsky. Marble. 1947. Soviet sculptor Zinovy Vilensky. The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Soviet sculptor Zinovy Vilensky (1899-1984) – People’s Artist of the USSR (1980), second-degree Winner of the Stalin Prize (1948), member of the USSR Academy of Arts (1954). Zinovy (Zalman) ​​Moiseevich Vilensky was born October 15, 1899 in the village of Koryukovka of Chernigov region. He studied at the Department of painting of Kiev Art School, graduated from the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops in Moscow (1922-1928). Vilensky worked in the genre of monumental sculptures and sculptural portrait. His work is characterized by the transfer of the individual characteristics of the workshop model, careful modeling, the use of the expressive possibilities of the natural texture of the material.
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