Neizvestny Ernst Iosifovich (born 1926, Sverdlovsk) — sculptor and graphic artist.

Ernst Neizvestny served at the front during World War II from 1943 to 1945. In 1945–1946 he taught drawing at the Suvorov Military School in Sverdlovsk. From 1947 to 1954 he studied at the V. I. Surikov Moscow Art Institute and simultaneously at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University.

From 1954 onward Neizvestny participated in Moscow art exhibitions. In 1958 he began work on the series Gigantomachy, conceived as an architectural monument to human creativity. In 1959 he won the competition for the design of a Victory Monument. He took part in the All-Union exhibition “The 30th Anniversary of the Moscow Union of Artists” (1962) at the Manege, where he entered into a public dispute with Nikita Khrushchev.

In the following years he worked on a series of engravings and drawings inspired by the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1963), exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade (1965), and created the sculptures Centaur and Stone Tears in Yugoslavia. Together with Marc Chagall, he was represented at an exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery in London. In 1966 he completed a 15-meter decorative relief, Prometheus, for the Artek Pioneer Camp, and in 1967–1969 illustrated the works of Dante.

Neizvestny participated in exhibitions in Paris and Locarno (1970) and at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv (1972). His sculpture Crucifixion was exhibited in the collection of Pope John Paul I (1973). In 1974 he created the tombstone for Nikita Khrushchev’s grave at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

In 1976 Neizvestny emigrated to Switzerland (Zurich), where he completed a bronze portrait of Dmitri Shostakovich for the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. From 1977 he lived in the United States, lecturing on art and philosophy at universities. In 1986 he became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the New York Academy of Sciences and Arts. In Uttersberg, Sweden, he founded a museum of his works titled The Tree of Life.

In 1989 Neizvestny lectured at Moscow State University. He also created projects for a monument to the victims of the Holocaust in Riga and a monument to the victims of Stalinism in Vorkuta. He was the author of poetry, essays, and memoirs.