2024 marks the 175th anniversary of the birth of Leonid Pozen, an outstanding Ukrainian sculptor, public figure and person who left a significant mark on the cultural life of Poltava.
Leonid Pozen was born on July 10(22), 1849, in the village of Oboloni, Khorolskyi District, Poltava Region, in the family of a landowner. He graduated from the First Poltava Gymnasium and in 1872 from the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. In Poltava, in 1876–1891, he served as a fellow prosecutor in the district court. Since 1891, he worked in the prosecutor's office of the St. Petersburg District Court. In 1912, he became a senator.
He did not receive a special artistic education. Engaged in sculpture independently. In 1882-1918, he was a permanent participant in the exhibitions of the Society of Mobile Art Exhibitions. In 1891, he became a valid member of the Society of Traveling Art Exhibitions. Since 1894, he was a valid member of the Imperial Academy of Arts, and since 1900 - a member of the Council of the Imperial Academy of Arts.
Leonid Pozen realistically depicted the life of Ukrainians, faithfully and expertly reproduced folk images, ethnographic scenes. He mostly worked on miniature plastic from terracotta and wax, easel compositions and busts.
His most famous works are the bronze monuments to Ivan Kotliarevskyi (a bust and three high-reliefs as illustrations of his works) and Mykola Gogol installed in Poltava. Some of Pozen's works are kept in the Kyiv Art Gallery National Museum, the National Art Museum of Ukraine, Mykolaiv, Odesa, and Poltava Art Museums, the Museum of Ethnography and Art Craft (Lviv), etc.
Leonid Pozen maintained a friendly relationship with famous artists Vasyl Volkov, Ivan Zaitsev, Hryhorii Miasoiedov.
He died in 1921 in Petrograd, buried in the Smolensk cemetery.
Poltava, the city with which Pozen's life and work are closely connected, honors the memory of the great sculptor: in 1962, the former 1st Road Lane was named in honor of Leonid Pozen, and in 2014 at the initiative of the Poltava Regional Organization of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine on the premises of the Poltava Vocational Cooperative College on Nebesna Sotnia, 9/17, a memorial plaque to Leonid Pozen was installed.
