„Labour and Art” mosaic, „Pavel Tkacenko” Palace of Culture, Bender
The „Labour and Art” mosaic on the risalits of the main facade of the „Pavel Tkacenko” Palace of Culture in Bender (Tighina), on the left bank of the Dniester. It was made in 1963 by the painters Mihail Burea (M.A. Burya) and Vladislav Obuh (V.A. Obukh) and is, according to the Bender researcher N. Aksengor, the first ceramic mosaic used in Soviet Moldavia. The composition, set symmetrically about the central entrance, is made up of two pairs of figures: on the left, a young man in overalls with a coil of wire on his shoulder beside a young woman in national costume carrying a bolt of cloth (an allusion to the products of Bender's leading enterprises); on the right, another youth plays the flute to a village girl at the grape harvest. The Palace was built to a complex architectural-artistic design (architect V. Mednek, 1962) and is one of the first buildings in the Moldavian SSR conceived as a synthesis of architecture and monumental painting; local legend has it that, to cut costs, the columns first planned were dropped and replaced with mosaics — which ended up costing even more. Note: the facade work is true ceramic mosaic, whereas the principal interior (foyer) panel — „Toilers of the City of Bender” — is, per the Transnistrian sources, a painting stylised as mosaic rather than an actual mosaic. The work survives: at a 2023 inspection Aksengor describes it as in satisfactory condition, with no loss of fragments or serious damage. The Palace is a listed monument of architecture and a stop on the Transnistrian Tourism Agency's „Socialist Realism in Bender” route. No openly-licensed photograph of the mosaic exists.
- Track
- Left Bank (Transnistria)
- Neighborhood
- Bender (Tighina), Transnistria
- Artist
- Mihail Burea și Vladislav Obuh
- Year
- 1963
- Building
- Palatul de Cultură „Pavel Tkacenko”, str. Lenin 32, Bender (Tighina)