Creator of Puerto Banús landmark dies in Russia

Most sources present Zurab Tsereteli as a Russian painter, sculptor and architect. However, he is also a Georgian artist who was in constant contact with his homeland.

Zurab Tsereteli was born in Tbilisi on 4 January 1934. He studied art in the Georgian capital. There he married Inessa Andronikashvili, a princess from a noble Georgian family. In the 1960s Tsereteli worked as a staff artist at the Georgian Academy of Sciences, participating in research expeditions that influenced his work. During that very period Tsereteli began experimenting with bronze, glass, stone, wood and mosaics.

During the quite isolated Soviet era, Tsereteli managed to travel abroad to meet foreign artists whom he greatly admired. For example, in 1964 he travelled to France for a three-month internship and met Pablo Picasso in his studio. It is believed that that experience of personal dialogue with the Malaga-born genius largely determined Tsereteli’s later creative production. The artist's works were also influenced by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, including Marc Chagall, with whom he was personally acquainted.

Eventually Zurab Tsereteli moved to Moscow. In the Russian capital the artist served as president of the Russian Academy of Arts from 1997 until his death. Additionally, 30 years ago, the artist founded the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, which officially opened in 1999, becoming the first state museum in the country fully dedicated to modern and contemporary art. In 2012 Tsereteli also founded the Museum of Contemporary Art in his native Tbilisi.

The Georgian-Russian master became famous for his large-scale and sometimes controversial monuments, not only in Russia and other countries, but also in Andalucía. For example, The Birth of a New Man (El Nacimiento del Hombre Nuevo) was unveiled in San Jerónimo Park in Seville in 1995 (along with a smaller version that was donated to Unesco), in honour of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World by Europeans. The huge sculpture, 32 metres high and weighing 476 tonnes, was ironically dubbed as ‘Huevo de Colón’ (The Egg of Columbus).

The park is located in the north of Seville, far away from tourist paths and therefore hardly known even to locals.

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In contrast, another Columbus that is often defined as "that bronze guy with arms wide open" has been serving as a meeting point in Puerto Banús for three decades. The sculpture, officially titled Victory, was installed in Marbella's luxury harbour in 1996.

In March 2016, Zurab Tsereteli was appointed a Unesco Goodwill Ambassador. His monument The Tear of Grief (actually it is called To the Struggle Against World Terrorism), consisting of a huge drop suspended in the crevice of an enormous bronze rectangular tower, includes the names of all the victims of the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York.