Внеклассное мероприятие на английском языке. Степан Эрьзя — выдающийся скульптор XX века (для студентов СПО).

Stepan Erzia is an outstanding sculptor

of the 20th century

M en of genius can often be invisible, unsociable, they can be misfits, they can be strange. In society these people are badly understood, they are disliked and not very well received. And it is such people who make our world, our life better, more meaningful, more interesting. A genius who passed rather unnoticed. But it was he who, as they say, was favoured by God. STEPAN ERZIA

T he name of Erzia is widely known in Russia and abroad (in such countries as Argentina, France, Italy). The work of this remarkable sculptor attracts me by its uncommonness, lyricism and inspiration, psychological depth and musical harmony of composition.

A Mordvinian by birth, Stepan Dmitriyevich Nefedov chose his pseudonym after the name of his nation Erzia. Erzia. Erzia. My name is Stepan Erzia. Stepa was born in the autumn of 1876 in the village of Bayevo. Stepan spends his youth in Alatyr. He has the first painting lessons in icon workshops. After visiting Vrubel’s exhibition, Erzia gave up icon-painting, in which he has already quite skilled and made a point of getting a professional art training.

T he experience of his first stay abroad, the life in the cities of Italy and in Paris, the study of the world classics, contacts with exponents of modern Western art, left an indelible trace in Erzia’s soul.

E rzia works hard in Argentina creating works from quebracho and algarrobo. Quebracho is a tree whose soul was revealed by a talented man. Quebracho is increbibly hard and has distrinctive grain with an amazing range of shades. He makes such sculptures as: Alexander Nevsky (1931), the Ardent (1934).

I n August 1932, Erzia creates one of his most grandiose pieces of art – “Moses”. He used about 1000 small and large pieces of wood from the algarrobo tree and joined them with self-made glue. An American millionaire offers a huge sum of money for this piece of art. “I’m a single man. I have got no children. My sculptures are my children. Who sells their own children?”

E rzia feels all the time that he misses his Motherland. Throughout his life Stepan will harbor a great affection for his country. “I’ve remembered these people’s faces all my life”. Head of Mordovian Woman (1917), Portrait of the Sculptor’s Mother (1940), Portrait of the Artist’s father (1944).

E rzia tries to collect and keep everything in order to donate it to a museum in his country. And in the 1940s, he wants to return home. A person from the US offers to pay seven million dollars for all Erzia’s sculptures to exhibit them in the New York Museum of Modern Art. The artist refuses. “I’m don’t sell anything. I am going to Russia”.

In 1954 was his exhibition in Moscow. Erzia’s talent was recognized on the national level.

The sculptor’s chisel was in his hands till his last minutes. He died in Moscow, in 1959 in his workshop.

M ore and more people are discovering Erzia and his sculptures in the Mordovian Republic Fine Arts Museum named after S.D. Erzia. He was waiting for it all his life. But it never happened. It was only after his death that he got into his own museum in native city Saransk.

Has

the genius

left?