Ivan Shadr

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Ivan Shadr (Russian: Иван Шадр), pseudonym of Ivan Dmitriyevich Ivanov (Russian: Иван Дмитриевич Иванов) (11 February [O.S. 30 January] 1887 — 1941) was a Russian/Soviet sculptor who took his pseudonym after his hometown of Shadrinsk.

Shadr studied at the Artistic Industrial School in Yekaterinburg from 1903 to 1907, and from 1907 to 1908 at the drawing school of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in St Petersburg where the famous Nicholas Roerich was his teacher. He furthered his edication under Auguste Rodin and Emile-Antoine Bourdelle in Paris (1910–1911), and in Rome (1911 – 1912).

Shadr's early works, such as the project for the memorial to World Suffering (1916), were designed according to the principles of Art Nouveau. After the 1917 Revolution he was an active participant in the execution of the Monumental Propaganda Plan, in particular, he sculptured reliefs depicting the Socialist ideological leaders Karl Marx, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg, as well as several monuments to Vladimir Lenin.

In these years the characteristics of Shadr’s style were consolidated: an elevated, romantic organization of the figures and an emotional, dynamic composition. Among his most famous and characteristic works are sculptures Stone as a weapon of the proletariat (1927) and Woman with an Oar (1936).

In the 1920s, Shadr together with sculptor Piotr Tayozhny came up with one of the first designs of the Order of Lenin, the highest Soviet award.

Shadr also worked for Goznak, including on designing new Soviet money that included the symbols of that time: a worker, a peasant and a Red Army soldier.

Those sculptures remarkable for their vigorous and dynamic typical characters can be seen nowadays in the Russian Museum (plaster casts) and in the Tretyakov Gallery (bronze sculptures).