Alex Shagin


Alex Shagin is a coin designer.

Artistic overview

Shagin, born near Leningrad on 1947, graduated from the Vera Mukhina School of Arts and Design in Leningrad in 1972, and then designed commemorative coins and medallions for the Leningrad Mint. Peter the Great, Michelangelo, Apollo-Soyuz and the Moscow Olympics are but a few of his designs. He emigrated to the United States, and since 1980, has worked as a freelance medallic artist in Southern California.

Awards

He has works in museums and private collections around the world, including the Hermitage Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, Yad Vashem Museum, the British Museum and the Swedish Royal Medallic Collection. In 2002, as First Vice President of the American Medallic Sculpture Association he participated in the Federation Internationale de le Medaille congress by designing a special presentation medal for the American Delegation—The Medal of Liberty presented to twelve individuals by Ronald Reagan in 1986.

Organizations and Individuals that have commissioned works from Alex Shagin

Each project Alex Shagin designs is a personal tribute to the freedom and democracy he found since immigrating to America from Russia in the 1980s. His work on the Moscow Olympics and Los Angeles Olympics led to international recognition culminating in the American Numismatic Society’s Saltus Award in 1995. He has created works for the US Mint, Singapore Mint, Israel Government Mint, American Numismatic Association, Leningrad Mint, The White House to name a few.

Shagin medallic history

Shagin's principal work has been uniface and two-sided cast bronze medals. He has also produced freestanding medallic art. The classical tradition is the key to his art.
Yuri Barshay and Thomas F. Fitzgerald, with the assistance of Shagin, compiled the following list of his early works issued by the Leningrad Mint:
The following medals and coins are compiled from Coin World archives, with Shagin's favorites listed at the top:
Obverse shows a stylized wig forming a baroque frame in the upper left; reverse design, three musical cherubs in extremely high relief flying above an organ in the upper right; and a side view showing the depth of the sculpturing in the lower left. Mintage was limited to 150 pieces. Medals are hand finished, signed and numbered by the artist.
Variation on the subject of mythical and real world was used, combining the theme of the sculptor at work. Represented on the reverse, the artist is shown dreaming of his creations in a sculpture garden of fantasy. The obverse illustrates scenes of the sculptor's workplace: an artist modeling a small figure, enlarging a figure, and workmen casting a sculpture at an art foundry. This medal, executed in low relief, was the first in the series to be pierced. The hole in the meda1 corresponds to the sun warming the garden on the obverse and the mouth of the crucible from which molten bronze is poured on the reverse.
But Shagin chose a new, dramatic approach - that of viewing our world from outer space - and saying visually that "this is the only world we have."
The reverse design shows aspen and evergreen trees. Both sides incorporate the Rocky Mountains. Shagin has also designed medals for the 2005 and 1997 ANA convention medals.