KOVOZOO metal zoo
I visited a unique metal zoo in the Uherské Hradiště District of Staré Město, 90 kilometers (~56 miles) from Brno, in South Moravia. From 1867, the complex operated as a sugar factory for 130 years, until it was purchased by the current owner, KOVOSTEEL Recycling, a company that buys and processes scrap metal. Their metal art exhibition, KOVOZOO, was first opened in 2012. KOVOZOO’s unique works are creative and decorative, but they also convey an important message. The aim of their art is to show that even seemingly useless waste can be turned into something valuable, beautiful, exciting, and useful.
The works of art throughout the KOVOZOO metal park can be touched, you can sit on the various vehicles, and younger children will enjoy climbing some of them. The footbridges allow us to admire the area and wonders of this special metal park from above. The works of art are the creations of the company managers and their employees. The design and welding work is done on site. Many different animals have been sculpted. We can see elephants, horses, crocodiles, bulls, birds, dinosaurs, various vehicles made of scrap metal and much more. But we can also find well-known figures from movies such as Wall-E, the Tree of Life named Eywa, or the 9-meter-high Transformers characters.
“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.”
– Pablo Picasso