Prometheuses (mosaic cycle of School No. 5, Donetsk)

Прометеї (мозаїки загальноосвітньої школи № 5 у Донецьку)

Year1966

MediumMosaic in smalt and ceramic tile

DimensionsCycle of nine panels, approx. 220 m² in total

LocationSchool No. 5, 5 Shkilnyi Boulevard, Donetsk — surviving but needing restoration and inaccessible since 2014 under Russian occupation

The central panel of a nine-part cycle made in 1965–1966 by a collective led by Hryhorii Synytsia with Alla Horska, Halyna Zubchenko, Viktor Zaretskyi and Hennadii Marchenko: two figures raise a flame between cosmic spirals and folk-ornament suns. Eight smaller panels — «Космос», «Вода», «Вогонь», «Земля», «Життя», «Надра», «Сонце», «Повітря/Верба» — were completed in 1965, the central «Прометеї» in 1966.

Prometheuses (mosaic cycle of School No. 5, Donetsk)

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About the Artist

Alla Horska

1929–1970

Alla Horska (1929–1970) was a Ukrainian painter and monumentalist, and with her husband Viktor Zaretskyi a founder of the Club of Creative Youth "Suchasnyk" and a central figure of the Sixtiers and the dissident movement. Her output spans easel painting and portrait drawing, banned stage designs for Les Taniuk, and large mosaic and stained-glass cycles. She was murdered in Vasylkiv in November 1970 at the age of 41, and much of her monumental work has since been destroyed or is endangered.

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Movements

Mosaic Art

20th century – present

Art made by assembling images from small fragments of glass, smalt, ceramic or stone. In Ukraine the medium ranges from the monumental smalt panels of the Soviet-era public-building programme to contemporary independent and street practice, where artists mount mosaic panels directly on facades and interiors. Since 2022 a distinct wartime strand has appeared in front-line cities, with artists composing mosaics from window glass shattered by Russian strikes and returning the finished works to the sites of the damage.

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Also part of

Monumentalism Folk Decorative Art Sixtiers (Shistdesiatnyky)

Related Works

1967

Kestrel (Boryviter)

A hovering kestrel built from smalt, its silver-grey plumage spread across a sun and a field of blue that answered the sea visible from the restaurant windows; the bird was read as an emblem of artistic freedom. Made with a team including Viktor Zaretskyi, Halyna Zubchenko, Borys Plaksii, Hryhorii Pryshedko, Vasyl Prakhnin and Nadiia Svitlychna in under two months, rediscovered behind a wall during a 2008 renovation, and destroyed with its companion panel during the Russian bombardment of Mariupol in 2022. It gave its name to Horska's 2024 retrospective at the Ukrainian House in Kyiv. Also referred to in Ukrainian sources as «Птах-мрія».

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1967

Wind

An abstract composition begun in 1967 and finished in 1968 by Horska with Viktor Zaretskyi and Borys Plaksii, fusing folk-ornament motifs with a Ukrainian avant-garde vocabulary. It is one of the few Horska mosaics still in place in Kyiv.

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1966

Prometheuses, Earth, Fire (mosaics of School No. 5, Donetsk)

Viktor Zaretskyi

Zaretskyi's contribution to the nine-panel mosaic cycle made in 1965–1966 by a collective led by Hryhorii Synytsia with Alla Horska, Halyna Zubchenko and Hennadii Marchenko. The central «Прометеї» panel sets two figures raising a flame among cosmic spirals and folk-ornament suns; the cycle fuses Ukrainian folk decoration, Baroque and Mexican muralism.

wikimedia-commonspublic-domain

2024

Tree of Life 2 (Eye of War)

Valentyna Huk

One of two panels installed beside Kharkiv's Palace of Labour, made entirely from glass gathered in the building's own courtyards after a strike. The composition resolves into a single watching eye set in the branching tree form.

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