Sculptor and President of the Russian Academy of Arts Zurab Tsereteli has passed away today at the age of 91, his aide Sergey Shagulashvili said.
"Zurab Konstantinovich passed away at 1:30 a.m. Now we are deciding when to hold the wake," Shagulashvili said.
According to him, the death occurred due to heart failure, TASS rewported.
Zurab Tsereteli is an artist and a sculptor, an educator and a public figure, People’s Artist of the USSR, Georgia and Russia, the President of the Russian Academy of Arts. He was born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1934.
He established the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 1995 and founded the Museum of Modern Art in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2012.
Tsereteli was in charge of many large-scale art projects. In 1970-1980, he was the art director of the Russian Foreign Ministry, in 1980 - the art director of the Moscow Olympics, in 1995, he oversaw the construction of the Poklonnaya Hill memorial in Moscow and the reconstruction of the interior of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.
His works are located in streets and squares, state and public buildings in Moscow and other cities in Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States and abroad.
