3 våningen inrymmer en permanent utställning med skulptur, måleri, teckning och grafik från 1950-talet fram till slutet av 1990-talet av den rysk-amerikanske skulptören Ernst Neizvestny. Flera av konstverken är tillkomna under konstnärens årliga vistelser vid Galleri Astley i Uttersberg under perioden 1977-87.

“The foremost living Russian sculptor and philosopher of art, Ernst Neizvestny, is an artist of monumental synthesis in the Russian avant-garde tradition of Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, and Pavel Filonov. This world-renowned Russian-American artist and philosopher represents a unique fusion of East and West and embodies the concept of synthesis in his life and art. Neizvestny’s brilliant theory of synthesis in art, his monumental style of sculpture and painting that integrates spiritual content and modern form, and his vision of world harmony and freedom are symbolized in his drawings, sculpture, graphics and monuments.”

Among his works are the ”Lotus Blossom,” an 87 meter monument atop the Aswan Dam in Egypt, a 150 square meter stone monument at the Artek Pioneer Camp in Crimea to honor the children of the world, the headstone of the grave of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, a crucifix in the Vatican Museum, a head of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich for the Kennedy Center, representations of the Tribes of Israel, and a ”Tree of Life” monument to human creativity in art, science, and technology. He designed a “New Statue of Liberty” for the Republic of China and a “Monument to the Archangel Michael” for Great City Novgorod. Of the commissioned “Triangle of Suffering, Memorials to the Victims of Stalinism” in Sverdlovsk, Vorkuta, and Magadan, Russia, the latter was finished and unveiled in July, 1996. The monument to the Kalmykian deportation ”Exodus and Return” was opened and unveiled in Dec. 1996, and he continues to work on large base reliefs for the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Christ Our Savior in Moscow, of ”Creation” and ”Revelations.”

Ernst Neizvestny…what has been said:

Neizvestny has been called “one of nature’s monumentalists” by John Russell, art critic for the New York Times.

Noted author Harrison Salisbury writes, ”I regard Ernst Neizvestny as one of the great artistic talents of the twentieth century.” From the blending of his two worlds, the oppression of the USSR and the freedom of the west
”…Neizvestny has emerged as a true voice of our contradictory times.”

The director of the Tel Aviv Museum in Israel, Dr. Haim Gamzu, acclaims that ”Neizvestny´s art is one of the most efficient means of communication because it helps to reveal in every huming being something which binds him to his fellows, laying bare what is common to people of all races, all countries, all manners of humanistic thought.”

Arthur Miller has described Neizvestny as an “artist of the East: who is regarded by Russians as an ”expression of the country, of its soul, language, and spirit” and as a ”prophet of the future” who represents the ”philosophical conscience of his country.” In Miller´s view, Neizvestny´s art—with its themes of suffering and violence, and its quest for the meaning of life—is a ”prophetic assertion of human solidarity” and is profoundly religious, because it ”seeks the transfiguration of flesh into spirit, of society into the city of God.”

John Berger describes Neizvestny as “the first visual artist of genius to have emerged in Soviet Union since the twenties.” The British art critic was so impressed with what he learned about Neizvestny, that in 1969 Berger wrote a book on Neizvestny´s art (Art and Revolution, Pantheon Books) strictly from photographs, without ever seeing a piece in person. Commenting on Neizvestny´s graphic works, Berger writes: ”His series of two hundred etchings entitled ”Man´s Fate” is, by any critical standard, one of the great graphic works of our time, comparable to Rouault´s ”Misere” or Picasso´s ”Guernica” etchings.”