Home / Art / Sculpture

Red Statues of Putin Riding a Tank Pop Up in Parks Around the World

By Jessica Stewart on August 8, 2022

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by James Colomina (@jamescolomina)

In Paris, Barcelona, and New York City, a red statue of Vladimir Putin has quietly made an appearance. The brainchild of French artist James Colomina, the statue shows the Russian leader riding a small tank like a child would ride a toy car. Colomina is known for his red sculptures that often comment on social issues, and after five months at war with Ukraine, Putin could not escape the artist's commentary.

Colomina has been posting photos of the Putin statue in different parks around the world since late June. The images, which are just as powerful as the sculpture itself, often show children interacting with the piece. These children, unaware of the statue's meaning, have even involved it in a squirt gun fight. All of these interactions only feed back into Colomina's reasons for creating the red Putin sculpture in the first place.

“This sculpture aims at denouncing the absurdity of war and at highlighting children’s courage when faced with violent, catastrophic situations triggered by others,” Colomina wrote on Instagram.

Children are a recurring theme in Colomina's work. In particular, recent sculptures have featured a young child wearing a gas mask and a child hugging a gun that is shooting out a rose. These sculptures, in bright red, are installed in public and are impossible to ignore.

Colomina told Newsweek that he feels a duty as an artist to comment on the horrors of war and that the Ukraine invasion touched him in particular. “What inspires me, in general, is the news and injustices,” he shared. “I experienced the invasion of Ukraine as a trauma. The city I currently live in, Toulouse in France, is twinned with the city of Kyiv.

“Art, in all its forms, can be the support of a denunciation of war and its atrocities. It allows you to say things differently and participate in the duty of memory. It seems essential to me to react.”