“Give me a mountain!..”: unrealized “Sculpt of mountains” projects by S. D. Erzia

The article reconstructs the history of unrealized “sculpt of mountains” projects by Russian sculptor S. D. Erzia: in Italy, the USSR (the Urals, the Volga region, the Caucasus), Latin America (Argentina, Brazil). It shows the origins of Erzia's “sculpt of mountains” concept (Michelangelo's ideas), reveals its artistic originality, ideological and thematic peculiarities and the difference from the “sculpt on the mountains” practices by sculptors - his contemporaries (Gutzon Borglum) and disciples (Vladimir Iosifovich Ingal, etc.). It determines the facts of communication between the artist and well-known figures of the national and world history - representatives of the authorities, the persons on whom the possibility of implementation concrete “sculpt of mountains” projects depended (Soviet statesman and Communist Party official, one of the organizers of mining and exploration business in the USSR Fyodor Fyodorovich Syromolotov, chairman of the Union of Miners of Azerbaijan Aleksandr Alekseevich Nikishin, President of Brazil Getúlio Dornelles Vargas, Governor of the Argentine province of Córdoba Amadeo Sabbatini, dictator of Argentina Juan Domingo Peron et al. The study is based on the documents of the Central State Archives of the Republic of Mordovia, the Manuscript Department of the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Manuscript Department of the State Russian Museum, as well as on unknown and little-known materials from the domestic and foreign press materials of the 1910-1940.