A ten-meter bronze horseman will be a monument to Cossack Sotnyk [Captain] Kharko (aka Kharyton). According to legend, he built a fortress in the seventeenth century and gave his name to the town and one of the local rivers. Interestingly, the statue will be a jubilee present to Kharkiv from its sponsors and personally from Zurab Tsereteli, meaning the project will cost the city budget nothing.
Two weeks ago, Zurab Tsereteli, President of the Russian Academy of the Arts, paid a visit to Kharkiv, meeting with Mayor Volodymyr Shumilkin, deputies of the city council, and local architects. He and colleagues discussed the site of the monument. Incidentally, it will be the first horseman statue, as all the previous monuments represented standing figures, except Prince Yaroslav the Wise on his throne (the statue was unveiled in the mid-1990s, after the local Academy of Law was named for the ruler of Kyiv Rus’).
Finding the site for a monument immortalizing the founder of a city with 1.5 million population turned out a difficult task. The architects are considering several options. After they agree on one. Zurab Tsereteli (author of the statue on Poklonnaya Hill) to ascertain the statue’s size. Even now, however, it is know that it will be kept in the author’s favorite format: eight to ten meters.
The project is also a target of criticism, particularly by Kharkiv sculptor Feliks Betleyemsky. In addition to censorial remarks concerning the artistic aspect of the Russian present, he stresses above all that the city authorities had previously announced a contest for the best monument commemorating Kharkiv’s jubilee. His project had won (an arch of triumph that would cost the city budget over 7 billion hryvnias, for which the fathers of the city had also been severely criticized by other sculptors, specifically those who projects had been rejected). He made a clay model, claiming to have spent UAH 220,000, for which purpose he had sold his apartment. So when the city council agreed to accept the present instead of building Betleyemsky’s project, this was considered a dishonorable act.
The Mayor of Kharkiv is gratified by an opportunity to save city budget money and promises to recompense all of Feliks Betleyemsky’s expenses.
Be that as it may, Kharkiv will receive a monument for its jubilee and it might well become one of the city symbols.
