Ukrposhta (Postal Service)

Location: Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine

Completed: 1967

Architect/Artist: S. Rets/Oleksiy Konopelko 

Mosaic name: “More Cast Iron, Steel and Rolled Stock for the Motherland”

Genre: Mosaic, Soviet artwork, former USSR

The panel depicts the Dnieper Hydroelectric Dam and is inspired by a poem called “War with the Dnieper River” by the well-known Russian Soviet Children’s writer Samuel Yakovlevich Marshak (1887-1964). According to a couple of news reports, a 2019 attempt by Ukrposhta to rent the space out for advertising purposes, which would have seen the monumental artwork covered up, was quashed by the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of the Zaporizhzhia City Council after local historians and archivists made their case for the mosaic’s historical value. More examples of Soviet-era mosaics.

Ukrposhta (Postal Service) (“More Cast Iron, Steel and Rolled Stock for the Motherland”) in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine | Mosaic | Soviet artwork | former USSR

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