Prometheuses, Earth, Fire (mosaics of School No. 5, Donetsk)
«Прометеї», «Земля», «Вогонь» (мозаїки школи № 5 у Донецьку)
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.
Related Works
Portrait of the People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR Tetiana Tsymbal
A late portrait from the period in which Zaretskyi absorbed the Vienna Secession, the sitter set against a flattened field of gilded ornament in the manner that earned him the nickname "the Ukrainian Klimt".
Prometheuses (mosaic cycle of School No. 5, Donetsk)
Alla Horska
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.
Kestrel (Boryviter)
Alla Horska
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».
Wind
Alla Horska
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.