Matvei Manizer

Born Mar. 5 (17), 1891, in St. Petersburg; died Dec. 20, 1966, in Moscow. Soviet sculptor. People’s Artist of the USSR (1958). Became a member of the CPSU in 1941. Brother of G. G. Manizer.

Manizer studied under V. E. Savinskii at the Stieglitz Central School of Drafting in 1908 and 1909. He attended the School of Drawing of the Society for the Promotion of the Arts from 1909 to 1911 and the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1911 to 1916. At the academy he studied under V. A. Beklemishev.

Manizer helped implement the plan of monument propaganda (for example, the relief The Worker, cement, 1920-21, Petroskii Passaze Department Store, Moscow). In 1926 he became a member of AKhRR (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia). Manizer taught at the Leningrad Academy of Arts (1921-29, 1935-41, 1945-47), the Moscow Institute of Applied and Decorative Art (1946-52), and the Moscow Art Institute (from 1952). In 1947 he became the vice-president of the Academy of Arts of the USSR.

Manizer primarily did bronze monumental sculptures. He was greatly influenced by the tradition of the late academic school, and his works are marked by ideological timeliness and the realistic generalization of images. Manizer’s best-known works include the monuments to V. Volodarskii (unveiled in 1925) and the victims of January 9, 1905 (1931) in Leningrad, to V. I. Lenin (1925), V. I. Chapaev (1932), and V. V. Kuibyshev (1938) in Kuibyshev, to T. G. Shevchenko in Kharkov (1935) and Kiev (1938), to V. I. Lenin (1940; State Prize of the USSR, 1941) in Ulianovsk, and to I. P. Pavlov (1949; State Prize of the USSR, 1950)in Riazan’. Manizer also did a statue of Zoia Kosmodem’-ianskaia (bronze, 1942, Tret’iakov Gallery; State Prize of the USSR, 1943) and a number of bronze statues and sculptural groups for the V. I. Lenin Moscow Ploshchad’ Revoliutsii subway station (1936-39) and Izmailovskii Park (1944). He sculptured numerous portraits. Manizer was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Star, and various medals.