Leo Mol

I was working at the Vatican on a sculpture of Pope John Paul II. One day, the Pope asked me: “Where are you from?” As always, I said, “Polonne, in Ukraine.” The Pope told his secretary to bring the most detailed atlas of the world to find that city on the map. And I was so pleased that the Pope was looking for little Polonne, which meant he would know about the existence of such a town.

Leo Mol

Leo Mol (real name — Leonid Molodozhanyn) was a Ukrainian-Canadian sculptor, painter, and academician of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

He was born in 1915 in Polonne (now Khmelnytsky region). 

His father taught him pottery. Leo Mol got his professional art education from Matvii Manizer at the Leningrad School of Painting, at the art studio of Wilhelm Frass in Vienna, the Berlin Academy of Arts (Germany), and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (Netherlands). In 1948, he settled in Winnipeg, Canada. A pivotal moment in his career was winning the competition to create a Taras Shevchenko monument in Washington, DC (USA) in 1962.

His sculpture of Kobzar (Taras Shevchenko) has become one of the most iconic Ukrainian monuments in the world. Among the other artist’s famous works are monuments to Taras Shevchenko in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Ottawa (Canada), Popes Paul VI, John XXIII, and John Paul II, Cardinal Josyf Slipyj, and Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. In 1990, Leo Mol donated his works to the city of Winnipeg. Subsequently, more than 300 of his works were exhibited in one of the gardens of Assiniboine Park in Winnipeg, which now bears his name — the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden. The artist died in 2009. He received many awards for his significant achievements in art, including the Order of Canada (1898) and the Ukrainian Order of Merit, Second Class (2001), and was named a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.