Monument of Buchenwald survivor Olympic champion Viktor Chukarin, gymnast, seven-time Olympic champion and one of the greatest athletes of the world

Buchenwald survivor Olympic champion Viktor Chukarin

The monument to Viktor Chukarin (9 November, 1921 – 25 August, 1984) reveals a unique story of Soviet gymnast. He rarely smiled, was very silent and never told about the past. But his past was worth, at least, writing a book, or making a film. The man, prisoner number 10491 of Buchenwald, passed through war, starvation, seventeen of Nazi concentration camps, “barge of death” survivor, and, despite of this, has become a seven-time Olympic champion and one of the greatest athletes of the world! Life of Viktor Ivanovich Chukarin – is not just an example of strength and spirit. His life can be a great lesson in courage, patience, and struggle. Nowadays, many young men complain of a hard life, talk about problems. And who knows, maybe the story of Chukarin can make them look at life differently.
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Loving eyes of Bronze Horseman monument

Loving eyes of Bronze Horseman monument

Masterpiece by French sculptor Etienne Maurice Falconet Bronze Horseman has become the most mysterious symbol of Saint Petersburg. Few people know that one of the most romantic symbols of the city – the Bronze Horseman is looking at the city with loving eyes, literally: each of his pupils made in the shape of a heart. The equestrian statue of the founder of St. Petersburg Peter the Great performed the French sculptor Etienne Falconet in 1768-1770 by order of Empress Catherine the Great. However, the head of the sculpture made his pupil – sculptor Marie-Anne Collot. The peculiarity of her creation was the fact that Peter’s pupils were made in the shape of hearts. There is a legend that the sculptor wanted to confess her love to the already middle-aged teacher.
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Blind Sculptor Ballerina Lina Po. Self-portrait. Bronze. 1940. This self-portrait shows through some grief, concealed sadness about bygone days

Blind Sculptor Ballerina Lina Po proves the fact – talented people are talented in everything. It is difficult to understand how the blind could convey not only external similarity, but also the character and mood. It is like a miracle. Lina had the rare gift of “inner vision”, or, as engineers, spatial imagination, brought to a high degree of perfection. Deprived of view, she “saw” things in her imagination vivid and three-dimensional, as in the bulk film. Sometimes, with touch caught the details and subtleties unnoticed by sighted sculptors – professionals. In this hard to believe. But it was so.
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Sculptural composition dedicated to Vysotsky and Marina Vlady in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Vladimir Vysotsky monuments

I am not sure what man has the most monuments erected to him, but after Vladimir Lenin it is probably Vladimir Vysotsky (25 January 1938 – 25 July 1980) – Soviet Russian bard, poet, song writer, film and theater actor. Vladimir Vysotsky monuments can be found worldwide – mostly in Russia and Ukraine, as well as in Poland, the USA, Bulgaria, Belarus, etc. His name was given to parks, cultural centers, museums, memorials, streets and squares, and even an impressive skyscraper in Yekaterinburg, Russia was named after him. Following the results of opinion poll conducted in 2010, Vysotsky took second place in the list of “heroes of the XX century” after Yuri Gagarin. The survey, conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation in mid-July 2011, showed that, despite the decline of interest in the works of Vladimir Vysotsky, the absolute majority (98%) of Russians know the name “Vladimir Vysotsky” and 70% responded that his songs are pleasant, and consider his creativity important phenomenon of the XX century Russian culture.
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Beautiful Italian sculptor Gina Lollobrigida

Beautiful Italian sculptor Gina Lollobrigida
The famous Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida, even in the era of her triumphant success in the movie was passionately fond of drawing and sculpture. In her youth, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, but later the talent and beauty have led her to a new way of expression – the cinema. Having achieved great success in the cinema, she finished her film career in the 1990s, and returned to her first love – sculpture.
In her art gallery – dozens of sculptures, life-size in bronze and clay … Meanwhile, the cinema has become a source of inspiration for her sculptural works. Thus, the sculpture is a magical golden mirror of Gina, in which come alive beautiful heroines played by Lollobrigida in the movie: Esmeralda, the Queen of Sheba, and Paolina Borghese …
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Ballerina Sculpture by Elena Yanson Manizer. 1931

Ballerina Sculpture by Elena Yanson Manizer
This gypsum sculpture of Ballerina was made in 1933 in the USSR. The author of the sculpture – Elena Yanson-Manizer (1890-1971) – a famous Russian sculptor and graphic artist with a subtle sense of ballet. The author has created a series of sculptures devoted to such ballet performances, as “Swan Lake”, “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai”, “Romeo and Juliet”, and “Egyptian Nights”. Works by Yanson-Manizer constitute the “golden fund” of Soviet sculptural plasticity of the twentieth century, and many of them exhibited in museum collections, such as the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum and others. As for the sculpture in the above photo, it is not just a collective image of an abstract ballerina – it is a legendary dancer of the XX century Natalia Dudinskaya.
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