Artist - Sculptor Leo Mol Dies

(Winnipeg Free Press) - Winnipeg sculptor Leo Mol has died at age 94. Mol died peacefully on July 4 at the Tache Centre medical facility  surrounded by family and friends.

Originally born Leonid Molodozhanyn in Ukraine, many of his bronze statues are known and loved by Winnipeggers and people from around the world who have visited the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden, one of the most popular features at Assiniboine Park. He was a prolific artist and some of his works include likenesses of three different Popes which stand in museums in the Vatican, Queen Elizabeth II in the courtyard between the Centennial Concert Hall and the Manitoba Museum and a life-sized statue of former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

Mol immigrated to Canada as farm hand in Saskatchewan on New Year’s Day, 1949. He moved to Winnipeg months later and the first breakthrough in his art career came when he won an international commission to do a five-metre tall sculpture of Ukrainian writer Taras Shevchenko in Washington D.C. in the early 1960s.