Tsereteli Designs Tsunami Monument
The St. Petersburg Times
Controversial sculptor Zurab Tsereteli is working on a monument to victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami in Southeast Asia on that killed about 300,000 people. His plans were confirmed at St. Petersburg's MonumentSculptura plant, where Tsereteli usually constructs his works. The work is only in the design stage. The center of the monument will be a tree of life - an ancient religious object of worship for the people of the world. Tsereteli plans to show the tsunami wave approaching the tree. The monument is to be offered as a gift from the Russian people to the countries hit by the tsunami. Tsereteli, well known for his taste for gigantism, has also unveiled plans for a bronze and granite monument to the victims of last September's hostage crisis in Beslan. The sculptor also made a monument to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. However, Jersey City, where he first intended to install his 10-story high "Tear of Grief," rejected his work. It is now to be installed in Bayonne, New Jersey. Tsereteli has made several works that have been erected overseas, although it is not clear that his donations are always welcome. In June last year he unveiled a five-meter statue of Honore de Balzac, the 19th century novelist, in the French town of Agde, not in Paris as was expected. His giant statue of Peter the Great stands incongruously in the Moskva River in Moscow, where his close friend Yury Luzhkov is mayor and a number of Tsereteli works feature in public places. Tsereteli's 45-meter monument "Birth of the New Man" stands in Seville, Spain.
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