Popular Far-Right Russian Artist Dies
Anna Somers Cocks writes: ‘Ilya Glazunov, who died 9 July, was one of Russia’s top two regime artists, sharing this pinnacle with Tsurab Tsereteli, creator of the vast Peter the Great monument in the centre of Moscow. (Glazunov is pictured painting Gina Lollobrigida.) Like Tsereteli, he realised that Russians had tired of the relentlessly optimistic, forward-looking tropes of Soviet Realism and tapped into the romantic nationalism of the people and their
rulers. He was born in Leningrad in 1930, studied at the Repin Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and married Nina Vinogradova-Benois, a descendant of the stage designer Alexandre Benois and cousin of the English actor Peter Ustinov, and herself a talented costume designer.
