Throughout the former Soviet Union, almost unlimited public money was spent on mosaics to try and liven up the gray, boxy suburbs of the communist world, like this 1975 work, titled Environmental Protection, in Kyiv’s eastern suburbs.
Mosaics became Soviet officials’ public art of choice after 1918 when leader Vladimir Lenin realized the giant public paintings he had originally envisioned to decorate his “utopian” cities would fade away in the brutal winters of the U.S.S.R. Here a Soviet-era mosaic rests on a post office in the abandoned town of Pripyat, near Chernobyl.
