Molodozhanyn, Leonid

Molodozhanyn, Leonid [Молодожанин, Леонід; Molodožanyn; Mol, Leo], b 15 January 1915 in Polonne, Volhynia, d 4 July 2009 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Sculptor and stained-glass artist. He studied at the art academies in Berlin and the Hague before emigrating to Winnipeg in 1948. He has created over 90 stained-glass windows, including 30 for the Saints Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in Winnipeg. Mol has earned an international reputation as one of Canada's leading sculptors. Working in the classical tradition, he won numerous international competitions, including ones for monuments to Taras Shevchenko in Washington, DC (1964), and Buenos Aires (1971), to Queen Elizabeth II in Winnipeg (1970), and to the former Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker in Ottawa (1985). He executed numerous busts of well-known figures, including Winston Churchill (1966), Dwight D. Eisenhower (1965), John F. Kennedy (1969), Popes Paul VI (1967), John XXIII (1967), and John Paul II (1982), and Cardinal Yosyf Slipy (1971). To commemorate the millennium of Ukrainian Christianity in 1988, he created bronze monuments of Saint Volodymyr the Great for the Ukrainian communities in London (England), Winnipeg, and Toronto. A past president of the Manitoba Society of Artists and the Sculptors' Society of Canada and a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the Allied Artists of America, for his contribution to Canadian art he was awarded honorary doctorates by the Universities of Winnipeg and Alberta (1985) and was appointed to the Order of Canada (1989). In 1992 the Leo Mol park and museum was established in Winnipeg. A monograph about him was written by the Canadian art historian P. Duval (1982).

Daria Zelska-Darewych

[This article was updated in 2014.]