Zurab Tsereteli Art Gallery - May 31/17 with Shirly

Zurab Tsereteli Art Gallery - Moscow

I'm not a huge fan of most museums, but this one was really quite impressive and interesting. Would I want to buy some of his works? Probably not, but still, it was really a lovely afternoon spent with my good friend Shirly in a neat place.

Zurab is a Georgian-Russian painter, sculptor and architect known for large-scale and at times controversial monuments. He's the President of the Russian Academy of Arts (since 1997).

The artist (Georgian born in 1934) featured here with his Putin in judo clothing statue (from the internet) - we didn't get to meet him, but other attache ladies did when they went on a tour to this museum.

His notable works of art are "The Peter the Great Statue" (below) (located here in Moscow), "Birth of the New World" and "Tear of Grief" (below)

Peter the Great Statue located close to where we live in Moscow, is 98 metres high. It was designed to commemorate 300 years of the Russian Navy, which Peter the Great established. In 2008, it was voted the 10th ugliest buildings in the world by Virtual Tourist and in 2010 it was included in the worlds ugliest statues by Foreign Policy magazine. Russians say "why pay tribute to Peter the Great, who loathed Moscow and moved the capital to St. Petersburg". The statue is allegedly based on a design originally intended to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the first voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1992. When an American customer could not be found for the project, it was re-purposed with a Russian theme, but Tsereteli denies this story.

Tear of Grief memorial (piece is actually titled "To the struggle against world terrorism" is a 10-story sculpture by Tsereteli that was given to the US as an official gift of the Russian government as a memorial to the victims of September 11th attacks in 2001.

 We arrived in the afternoon on a Wednesday to discover that it was free (instead of the usual 300 Roubles) and immediately went into the gift shop with the extremely colourful artwork made out of enamel. Gorgeous stuff in the gift shop and really unique art in the gallery.

Such quirky artwork!

Shirly with her friend Pushkin

The ladies who patrol the area were nice enough to let me pose with Pushkin too - after Shirly posed we got heck from a 3rd lady who was very angry with us for sitting on it.

Internet photo of the awesome inner courtyard of this gallery

See family below

You bad girl Shirly! 😍We're inside the Adam & Eve exhibit within a large apple

Wowser's!

Not for the prudish this Adam and Eve exhibit in the apple!

 

Incredible, large bronze statues throughout

 Shirly contemplating life ...

Shirly & I take our turns posing with Putin - he's taller than I expected! 😝

Slightly out of focus, but still funny

Shirly admires the flowers - the VERY colourful flowers

I think here she's saying "What the heck is this"?

If you're afraid of clowns, don't look!

Funky cool chandelier inside the little chapel here - you can't see it, but each of the 3 globes on the bottom have crystal crosses on top.

I highly recommend you go see this museum when in Moscow - the inner courtyard part being my favorite. Thanks Shirly for another fun day spent together!