Mosaic - "Sport" - Chisinau

The Sport mosaic ensemble occupies the facades of two buildings at the entrance to Parcul Valea Morilor on Alecu Mateevici Street, completed in 1962 by Vladimir Novikov and Filip Nutovich. The work comprises twelve individual panels, each depicting a different sport (rowing, cycling, athletics, track) rendered against a uniform beige ground with two or three figures per composition. The palette runs to yellow, blue, green, and red, and the material appears to be smalt. The sporting theme was no accident. Soviet cultural policy promoted physical culture as a civic virtue, and the collective dimension is visible even in the individual disciplines: athletes appear in pairs or groups rather than alone. Novikov and Nutovich collaborated again in 1965 on a stained glass work, Cosmos, in Chișinău, and again in Bălți in 1966, both executed in a Lithuanian style of nested geometric forms.