Earlier Nikolai Shmatko had foretold Donald Trump's getting to the White House and created his white Carrara marble bust. Today the author presents the bust of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin making a remark that he doesn't have any special feelings or admiration for the leaders. By putting them together he would like to warn that those two are standing next to the red line and after it there is the end of the world and life on the planet. So it is necessary to do all that is needed that they do not cross this line.
"Tomorrow these leaders will be gone, but today they are ruling the world and their decisions mean a lot," the sculptor comments. "I was thinking how to show the struggle between these world leaders. Who is Mr. Putin? What kind of person is he? I am showing him as a closed person pursuing his own interests. I saw his image in this way: he folded back his coat and... is making a fig sign – this way he shows that he rebukes all claims against him, and it is hard to guess what is on his mind. I am not presenting him as great: that he goes out of the Kremlin and everybody fetishizes him – I showed him as rough and unpredictable."
Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskiy, 15.10.2018 (photos of Rafael Shmatko)
