Igor Mitoraj

(Oederan, Germany, 1944 – París, France, 2014)

Igor Mitoraj, of Polish descent, was born in Oederan, Germany, in 1944. He studied at the Art School and Art Academy of Krakow, where he was given a classically oriented pictorial education. After exhibiting his work in Poland, he moved to Paris in 1968 to continue his studies at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He began sculpting for the first time after a trip to South America in 1974, and in 1975 he held a solo exhibition in Paris. Encouraged by the success of this exhibition, Mitoraj opened a sculpture studio in Paris, travelled to New York and visited Greece regularly to study classical sculpture. After visiting Carrara for the first time in 1979, he decided that marble was an ideal medium for his sculpture; in 1983 he opened a studio there and now divides his time between France and Italy. He has had numerous solo exhibitions both in Europe (France, Switzerland, Holland, Germany, Belgium, Monaco, Italy, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, Poland) and in the USA (New York Academy of Art, Gerald Peter Gallery in Dallas, Spoleto Festival in Charlton, etc.). He was a special guest at the 1986 Venice Biennale.

Mitoraj is full of technique, virtuosity and skill, memory, and knowledge of the best classical tradition, but he does not mimic it. Although the human body, the anthropomorphic representation, occupies most of his creative process, he makes use of the fragment, like Rodin, as an autonomous figurative unit. In this way, heads, torsos, hands, and feet reach their maximum expression and plastic independence. On the other hand, he is in the habit of breaking the closed contour of the sculptures so that the space penetrates the interior of the sculptural mass. In this sense, Mitoraj is more than a postmodernist anchored in the mannered enclave of the neoclassicals. There is humour in his work, with a slightly sinister ironic tinge.