NEW-YORK, August 20. /TASS/. Russian-American sculptor Ernst Neizvestny, who died on August 9 in Stony Brook hospital, was buried on Saturday in a small Shelter Island in the state of New York, his friend Oleg Sulkin told TASS on Saturday.
Relatives and close friends of Neizvestny came to the cemetery. "The funeral ended at approximately 15.00 [22.00 Moscow time]," Sulkin said. The sculptor has recently lived in Shelter Island town situated on the island of the same name.
"Bishop of Naro-Fominsk John read the prayer," Sulkin said. Neizvestny’s relatives will set a simple wooden cross on the tomb in accordance with sculptor’s wish, he added.
Neizvestny, who had lived in the United States since 1977, died in New York on Tuesday at the age of 91, his friend Jeff Bliumis told TASS earlier. Jeff Bliumis said the sculptor died at Stony Brook hospital where he been hospitalized with severe stomach pains.
Neizvestny was born in the Russian Urals city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) on April 9, 1925. He was a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, the 1941-1945 Soviet campaign against Nazi Germany, and holder of the Order of the Red Star.
After the war, he for some time taught technical drawing at Suvorov Military School in Sverdlovsk. He studied at the Art Academy in Riga, Latvia, and graduated from Moscow’s Surikov Art Institute.
In 1976, Neizvestny emigrated from the Soviet Union and lived and worked in the US since 1977. The Ernst Neizvestny Museum opened in his home city of Yekaterinburg two years ago. His pieces of art can be found in museums and cities across the globe.