Water Skier Sculpture (Samara)

The Water Skier is a bronze genre sculpture on the Volga embankment in Samara, on the second, Central stage of the embankment along Volzhsky Avenue. A girl on water skis, hair streaming and arms spread wide, has stood here for more than sixty years and is one of the best-known sculptures of the Samara embankment.

History

The sculpture is the work of Valentin Ivanovich Znoba. According to the Samara press, his pieces Water Skier, Bather and Worker with a Sputnik caught the eye of architect Vagan Karkaryan at an exhibition of Ukrainian art in the Kremlin Manege, and it was decided to place them on the embankment then being built in Kuibyshev, as Samara was called at the time. The second stage of the embankment was built in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the Water Skier became one of its features; sources date the installation variously, from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s.

The subject reflects Soviet youth's enthusiasm for water sports. Sailing had been practised in the USSR since the early 1920s, and after the All-Union Sailing Section was founded in 1936 it spread to many cities, including Leningrad, Gorky and Kuibyshev. The figure of the water skier stands for the strength, beauty and grace of young Soviet sportswomen.

Nearby

The sculpture stands on the second stage of the embankment, which runs for about 1,400 metres between the TsSK VVS swimming pool and the KINAP buildings, a former film equipment factory. The Water Skier is one of the female figures of this stretch, with the Bather by the same sculptor close by. Together with the alleys, the steps down to the beaches and the view of the Volga, the sculptures make this one of Samara's favourite places for a walk, which can easily be continued to the first stage and the Nekrasovsky descent.

Getting there

The sculpture is on the embankment by Volzhsky Avenue. By car, reach Volzhsky Avenue from Novo-Sadovaya Street. Buses No. 24 from the Avrora bus station and No. 61 from the Colosseum shopping centre and Dzerzhinsky Square run to the embankment; from the stops it is a short walk down to the water.

Good to know

The embankment sculptures are looked after by the municipal Samara Embankment agency: they are washed in spring after the winter and again during the warm season.