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. Based on extensive research in the formerly closed Soviet archives, exclusive interviews with Neizvestny, 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, successfully defied Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and the KGB to create acclaimed works of monumental art. Forced into exile to the West in 1976, Ernst Neizvestny returned in triumph to the Soviet Union in 1989 to design the first monuments in Russia to the countless victims of Stalinist political repression. Supplemented by 75 photographs, Centaur will engross specialists and general readers interested in biography, cultural history, art, architecture, politics, and Russian/Soviet studies. Visit the Ernst Neizvestny Studio Web site.

"Centaur: The Life and Art of Ernst Neizvestny is the first full biography of the most prominent and artistically accomplished sculptor and memorial-builder of the Soviet era. [Leong] excels at placing Neizvestny in the context of Soviet political and cultural history, and examining how he was misunderstood initially in the United States because of cold war stereotypes. Centaur is a serious and worthy consideration of the vexing moral and philosophical issues underlying the career of a courageous artist who (like Andrei Sakharov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Mstislav Rostropovich) confronted the evil of the Soviet system mano a mano." - The New York Times

"This is a book for those interested in the details of 20th-century Russian art with its social and political ramifications." - CHOICE

"Albert Leong's detailed, and highly documented account of the numerous twists and turns in Neizvestnii's long, complex, and highly diverse artistic career to date offers some fascinating insights into the problems faced by the monumental sculptor in the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond. Sadly, Albert Leong died shortly after the publication of Centaur. May the book long serve as a suitable epitaph for a man whose passion, dedication, and enthusiasm for Neizvestnii's work is inscribed within each and every word of this text." - Seer

"Ernst Neizvestny answered the official demands for optimistic 'depiction of life in the life's forms' with his tragic and highly symbolic grotesques. Albert Leong's sensitive study shows Neizvestny as a child of his time as well as a true heir to the Russian early 20th century avant-garde, with its peculiar quest for the synthesis of art, philosophy, and religion." - Dartmouth College

"Centaur is a truthful and beautiful work of art in its concept, subject, and design." - Slavic and East European Journal