"Preserving art, freedom, and human dignity in the age of the totalitarian state was one of the great challenges of the twentieth century. In Centaur, Slavic scholar Albert Leong chronicles the life and work of the greatest living Russian sculptor and philosopher of art, Ernst Neizvestny, who survived the Soviet police state to become a folk hero to his people.

Based on extensive research in the formerly closed Soviet archives and exclusive interviews with Neizvestny and his family and friends, Centaur tells the amazing story of a visionary artist and World War II commando officer who narrowly escaped death on the battlefield and successfully defied Stalin, Kruschev, Brezhnev, and the KGB to create acclaimed works of monumental art. Forced into exile in the West in 1976, Neizvestny returned in triumph to Russia in 1989 to design the first monuments to the countless victims of Stalinist political repression.

Supplemented by seventy-five photographs, Centaur will engross specialists and general readers interested in biography, cultural history, art, architecture, politics, and Russian/Soviet studies."--BOOK JACKET.