Ernst's great grandfather received his surname, literally meaning "unknown," when he was conscripted for military service as a cantonist.

[3] Although he was awarded the Order of the Red Star "posthumously" and his mother received an official notification that her son had died, Neizvestny managed to survive.

"[10] On 15 December, Neizvestny was among 400 guests invited to hear Khrushchev speak at Moscow's House of Receptions.

Khrushchev reputedly intended to be conciliatory, but went off script and pointing at one of Neizvestny's statues and demanded: "is that a horse or a cow?

[11] Despite these insults, in 1975, four years after Khrushchev's death, his family commissioned Neizvestny to design the monument over his grave at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Neizvestny's talent for large monumental sculptures was again recognized when in the late 1980s six Taiwan cities commissioned the New Statue of Liberty to be built in Kaohsiung harbor.

At least one about five feet tall, and approximately 13 smaller bronzes, each slightly over 18 inches, sold to clients of Magna Gallery in San Francisco.

He also worked with Magna Gallery in San Francisco and had a number of shows which were well-attended in the mid to late 1980s.

During this time, Neizvestny worked diligently to get his dream "Tree of Life" monumental sculpture funded and built.

Several small versions or spinoffs based on the theme were built, but the enormous monumental version that Neizvestny dreamed to build, inside which people could walk, has not been built although it has been fully conceptualized, planned out and detailed by the artist as a labor of love.

In 1996, Neizvestny completed his Mask of Sorrow, a 15-metre (49 ft) tall monument to the victims of Soviet purges, situated in Magadan.

Although he lived in New York City and worked at Columbia University, Neizvestny frequently visited Moscow and celebrated his 80th birthday there.