This art object was created within the scope of the project ‘Each of Us is a Hero. Everyone is Part of Modern History.’ The author of the portraits is Sasha Korban, a Ukrainian muralist.
The personalities portrayed on the mural are representatives of culture, architecture, science, and sports who loved the Zaporizhzhia region, contributed to its development, fought for education in Ukrainian, and brought glory to Zaporizhzhia in the sports arena.
Among those depicted is Mykola Korf (1834–1883), a distinguished educationalist, enlightener, zemstvo activist, and honorary member of the Geneva Academy of Sciences. According to genealogical research, Mykola Korf is an ancestor of Yevhen Korf, the Head of ENERGO-PLUS.
‘It is truly delightful that today we are uncovering the unknown pages of the history of our region and honoring those who made a valuable contribution to the educational sphere. We need to learn more about people we have not read about in school books, but who nonetheless changed the course of our history and made a big difference to the development of the Ukrainian language, as well as the opening of Ukrainian schools and libraries,’ commented Yevhen Korf.
The name of Mykola Korf was concealed by Soviet authorities for a long time, and it was only in the 1980s that his substantial contribution to education became widely known. His lifelong mission was advocating the right of Ukrainian children to study in their mother tongue in primary schools. Mykola Korf opened over forty primary schools in the villages of the Dnipropetrovsk region. His innovative approach to education laid the foundation for ‘Korf tryzymky’, which were rural schools where one teacher conducted lessons in three classes at once, with a three-month term of study.
A significant aspect of Mykola Korf’s work was the establishment of first rural libraries at schools in Zaporizhzhia, which were used by both children and adults.
The mural also depicts other renown figures: Yakiv Novytskyi (1847–1925), Volodymyr Mahar (1900–1965), Serhii Vasylevskyi (1917–1999), Felix Movchanovskyi (1852–1921), Pavlo Chyzhevskyi (1860–1925), Yakiv Punkin (1921–1994), and Anatolii Boiko (1960–2010).
