ONLY PERSIST | ERNST NEIZVESTNY

The eloquence of Ernst Neizvestny’s mature vision is inseparable from his experience as an artist during the most repressive periods of the Soviet regime. Those decades, when totalitarian ideologues sought to erase human presence from human culture oriented Neizvestny to place, with great urgency, the body at the center of his concern. Neizvestny's art seeks to restore to the embodied self the potential to manifest freedom. How we see the body mediates and conditions every aspect of how we lead an embodied life. 

Neizvestny is a singularly resolute figure, loyal to the “old-fashioned” mediums of painting and sculpture and to classic subjects such as the human body and face. He creates art that seeks to integrate our conscious and unconscious processes and to translate the derelict remains of the failed ideologies of the 20th Century into living metaphors of human dignity and moral commitment. 

• Simon Zalkind, Exhibition Curator
• From the collection of Wayne F. Yakes, MD
• Neizvestny website