The mosaic on the end wall of the building at the intersection of Sverdlova and Gogol streets is now almost 45 years old. The four-story building of the Precision Electromechanics Plant (TEM) was built here in the early 1970s. The plant’s general director, Nikolai Grigorievich Sazonov, decided to decorate the facade with something unusual and tasked the chief engineer of the capital construction department to come up with a design idea.
For this, Anatoly Demyanenko went to Leningrad. Acquaintances took him to the art and design workshop at the Academy of Arts. There he saw how artists were laying pieces of smalt on the floor, preparing to create a panel. One of them took on the task of turning the plain Penza wall into a work of monumental art.
The sketch delighted the TEM management: it depicted all the stages of human evolution – from Neanderthal to space flight!
The Ministry of Instrument Engineering of the USSR allocated 80,000 rubles for the mosaic’s production, and the installation was carried out by the plant workers themselves. The panel was prepared in 1x1 meter squares, then mounted on the wall.
The result was so well received by the city authorities that it was immediately decided to create a similar panel on the blank wall of the new “Volga” restaurant. Thus appeared the “Kandievsky Uprising.”
