Adam Mickiewicz Monument

On December 10, 1898, in the year of the 100th anniversary of the poet’s birthday, the results of the competition were announced, where 28 projects took part. The project of Anton Sulima Popel, who embodied the concept of the writer Adam Krekhovetsky eventually won: the pecularity was that the monument had the shape of a column, and this differed from the monuments to Mickiewicz in Warsaw and Krakow (both – 1898). The final design was apparently influenced by the Viennese monument to Mickiewicz (1896): in the figure of the poet the gesture of his right hand clenched in the air. It was this gesture that in the Lviv monument connected the figures of the poet and the angel flying with the lyre. The diagonal rhythm of the composition is underlined by intersecting straight lines: the left wing of the angel – lira – drape the poet’s cloak; the right wing is the foot of an angel. Verticals (torso – draping an angel, a figure of a poet) in combination with diagonals create the compositional harmony of a sculptural pair.