The Formula of Grief

Vadim Sidur

1972

Monument depicting curved, stylized figure with head in hands set among flowers in a grassy park with a house in the background.

Vadim Sidur was sometimes called “the Soviet Henry Moore” because of the similarities between his aesthetic and those of the British artist. In Sidur’s native Soviet Union, however, his work was suppressed for much of his career because of its nonconformism. In the 1960s, he created a series called Monuments, in which the artistic form was refined to a symbol or formula. Today, some of these sculptures serve as monuments in public squares in Russia and elsewhere. In the 1980s, Sidur’s The Formula of Grief (designed in 1972) was erected in the town of Pushkin by the Leningrad Holocaust Research Group as a memorial to the between 250 and 300 Jews murdered by the Nazis there.

Credits

www.panoramio.com. Anna Pronenko.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 9.

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Creator Bio

Vadim Sidur

1924–1986

Vadim Sidur was a Russian illustrator and sculptor, known for his geometric, interlocking, anthropomorphic stone and metal sculptures. His work often reflected the pain and trauma of war as expressed through the human body, in contrast to prevailing Soviet ideologies that glorified military service. Sidur himself was badly injured while serving in the Red Army during World War II and underwent extensive facial reconstruction. After the war, Sidur studied sculpture in Moscow, creating avant-garde, nonconformist pieces that were prohibited from public display within the Soviet Union. Despite the censorship of his art at home, Sidur made a career on private commissions outside the Soviet Union, including several Holocaust monuments. Today, the Vadim Sidur Museum in Moscow, established in 1989, preserves and displays his artwork.