Sculptor Vladimir Tsigal. The space of the war

Abstract

The article deals with the artistic understanding of the war as a global catastrophe in the work of a leading Russian sculptor-monumentalist of the 20th century Vladimir Efimovich Tsigal. V.E. Tsigal volunteered for the front. From 1942 to 1944, he was a front-line artist in the Black sea fleet, participating in combat operations and landings upon Malaya Zemlya, Novorossiysk and Kerch. Initially, the sculptor expectedly takes part in the Grandiose program on perpetuation of the heroes and victims of the Great Patriotic war. He creates a famous memorial complex on Malaya Zemlya, also the memorial complex-a monument to the victims of fascism and a monument to Dmitry Karbyshev in Mauthausen. However, years later, terrible insights about the true nature of what happened to him, to his comrades, to the country, make the artist change his view of the past. That space of war as the anti-idea of all human was realized in the chamber art of V.E. Tsigal: in sculptural reliefs, graphic works and epistolary heritage of the master. Thus, analyzing the work of the sculptor, it is possible to trace the vector of inner metamorphosis in the understanding of war as the artist’s complex set of experiences.