9/11 Memorial Gift from Russia by World Famous Sculptor Zurab Tsereteli

Written by Nicholas Camarena Friday, 08 July 2011 22:40

World-renowned Russian sculptor ZURAB TSERETELI has created a monument entitled "To The Struggle Against World Terrorism," a gift from Russian President Vladimir Putin, the people of Russia and the artist to the people of the United States. The monument will be dedicated on the five-year anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The monument will be the centerpiece of a two-acre park along the Bayonne, New Jersey waterfront opposite lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center towers stood.  It is in view of both the Statue of Liberty and Ground Zero.

The 100-foot-tall, 175-ton, bronze-clad tower encloses a 40-foot steel teardrop.  The monument’s eleven-sided granite based includes the names of all those who perished in the initial explosion at the World Trade Center in 1993 and in the 2001 9/11 attacks.

President Putin joined Tsereteli for a ceremonial groundbreaking in Bayonne, New Jersey in September 2005.  In June of this year, Russian craftsmen and engineers joined their American counterparts to work side-by-side on the monument’s installation.

The sculpture was shipped to the States in pieces from St. Petersburg, where it was created by the Russian foundry that two centuries ago cast the bronze statues for Peter the Great's summer gardens. 

Sculptor, painter, architect Zurab Tsereteli is the President of the Russian Academy of Arts and a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.  Amongst his prolific body of work exhibited throughout the world, he is widely known for the statue of Peter the Great in downtown Moscow and “Good Defeats Evil,” a sculpture he created using sections of scrapped US Pershing and Soviet SS-20 nuclear missiles, which sits on the grounds of the United Nations Building.