Meanwhile, although these references are not without sound justification, the artist’s work was also influenced by other cultural currents, artistic movements and cultural trends. Not without references to Christianity, his work also incorporates Hindu motifs, allusions to Buddhism and Aztec beliefs. It is no stranger to Dadaism, Surrealism or postmodernism. It also fits perfectly within the framework of contemporary art.

In the case of Igor Mitoraj, however, we can speak not only of a wealth of influences, but also of the diversity of artistic fields in which he was active. Although primarily associated with sculpture, Mitoraj was also an excellent draughtsman, printmaker, an outstanding designer of opera sets and costumes, and a skilful jewellery designer.

This essay will focus primarily on the artist’s sculptural work, whilst not overlooking the other fields of art practised by Igor Mitoraj.

From Grojec to Italy

Igor Mitoraj* was born on 26 March 1944 in the German town of Oederan, situated in Saxony, a dozen or so kilometres west of Freiberg. He was the son of Zofia Mąkina, a forced labourer, and George (surname unknown), a French officer in the Foreign Legion who was being held in a prisoner-of-war camp in the area.

In February 1945, the mother and son were taken to Dresden, from where they fled during the bombing. George returned to his native Paris. From Dresden, Igor and Zofia travelled to Grojec, situated near Oświęcim. Zofia Mąkina married Czesław Mitoraj, who adopted little Jerzy.

In 1959, Igor Mitoraj began his studies at the Secondary School of Fine Arts in Bielsko-Biała, before going on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków from 1966 to 1968 . However, Igor did not complete his studies : in 1968, he decided to emigrate to France, from where he travelled the world. In 1985, he bought a house in the Tuscan town of Pietrasanta, where he settled permanently.

The art of Igor Mitoraj, known as the ‘Michelangelo of the East’, gained immense popularity whilst the artist was still alive. The artist exhibited all over the world , including in Germany, Switzerland, Monte Carlo, France, Italy, Spain, the United States, England, Poland and Greece. He was made an honorary citizen of Pietrasanta, received an honorary doctorate from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (2003) and Poland’s highest state honours: the Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis (2005) and the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2012).

Igor Mitoraj died on 6 October 2014 at his estate in the south of France , Château de Confoux , after many years of battling cancer. He was buried in the local cemetery in Pietrasanta.

Imperfect Antiquity

The first associations that spring to mind when considering Igor Mitoraj’s art are antiquity and the ancient world . Drawing heavily on Greek mythology, the artist sought the heroes for his sculptures in Greek culture, depicting their beautiful, stately bodies.

The influence of antiquity in Igor Mitoraj’s art is evident in the classical model of beauty to which the artist adheres, in the ideal proportions and forms of his sculptures, as well as in their anthropomorphic beauty and the ubiquitous references to mythology. Igor Mitoraj openly draws upon anthropocentric figurative art, to which he remained most faithful (having emerged during the Pericles era, between the Battles of Marathon and Salamis and the death of Alexander the Great), representing the Attic style from the period between Phidias and Praxiteles.

Igor Mitoraj’s sculptures, in addition to the classical ideal of ancient beauty, also allude to the Platonic ideals of Beauty, Goodness and Truth, embodying the qualities so highly prized by the ancient Greeks, indeed radiating them.

However, the viewer of the work of the ‘Michelangelo of the East’ quickly realises that the mythological figures the artist has brought to life in his art—Eroses, Icaruses, Centaurs, Gorgons, Perseuses, Tyndareuses – and the heroes he himself has brought into being, such as Ikaria, Dea Roma or the Gorgon hunters, thereby creating his own mythological imaginary world, a separate realm to which he invites us, something is missing.

Icarus without wings, Ikaria without a head, Perseus reduced to a torso. Greek heroes, gods and figures deprived of arms and legs, maimed, crippled, weak. At times, the artist not only takes something away from the figures, but also adds to them . He applies bandages to their eyes and heads, has foreign hands entwine their torsos or ankles, submerges miniatures of other works within the torsos, and attaches them to their legs. Sculptures that are incomplete, yet complete.

This absence, as well as the addition, are the points where the classical gives way to entirely different influences.

There is a method in this absence

Absence, mutilation, harmony and ideal beauty shattered by imperfections—evoking the work of Tadeusz Kantor—rouse the viewer of Mitoraj’s art from the apparent bliss into which the visible influences of antiquity had managed to lull them. The space surrounding the sculpture—so important to Mitoraj’s works, which engage in a constant dialogue with it—begins to penetrate the split torsos.

A jolt away from the obvious, yet also a mystery. Igor Mitoraj’s mutilated sculptures become mystical witnesses to the present, leading inscrutable lives. They surprise with their shift in scale, and astonish with their heroism, which always leads to its own downfall and defeat.

Beauty is therefore imperfection, evoking a powerful wave of feelings and emotions. The fragmentary nature of the sculptures not only emphasises and brings home the passage of time, but also protects the artist from banality and cliché. Heroes who are unambiguous in their beauty and ideal, thanks to their imperfections, become a metaphor, a figure of speech. They step down from their pedestals to become like us.

Igor Mitoraj, a virtuoso of patina, a master of utilising a variety of materials, equally at home with bronze as with marble, was also – and perhaps above all – a virtuoso at blending influences and drawing on the various artistic movements of his era.

The very genesis of the sculptures, as indicated by the artist himself—who saw it in dreamlike visions, memories and the subconscious; in short , in a body of work based on anamnesis — constitutes one of the most important features and methodologies of postmodernist poetics.

Beware, however, of the trap of simplistic thinking! Although Mitoraj’s sculptures constitute a kind of postmodernist installation, they cannot be unequivocally classified within the aforementioned movement . For Mitoraj’s sculptures lack the irony, mockery, farce and pastiche characteristic of postmodernism. In their place, we find a whole range of features of contemporary art.

The ultimate indeterminacy of meaning, the entanglement of themes, the polyphony of art that refers back to itself, fragmentation, discontinuity and dispersion, as well as dislocation—that is, the rearrangement of a sculpture’s elements within a single work— or, finally, the synthesis of sculpture as form, structure and space, as well as its descent from the plinth to the viewer; it suffices to mention just a few of the above elements that make Igor Mitoraj a thoroughly contemporary artist .

And so , elements of postmodernism, a range of characteristics of contemporary art and… surrealism . We can trace its influence in the ambiguous bandages with which Igor Mitoraj readily wrapped his sculptures. The artist’s creative gesture is nothing other than the act of covering, wrapping and packaging – characteristic of surrealism, which, in Mitoraj’s case, also draws its roots from Polish imagination and a sense of the absurd. In the ‘wrapping’ of the sculptures, one can clearly see the influence of the Polish avant-garde, with its magical realism, surrealist humour and theatricality.

Who inspired the Polish sculptor? The influence of Tadeusz Kantor, as well as Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Maurice Henri and Christo , cannot be overestimated in the case of Igor Mitoraj. Among Mitoraj’s other inspirations, one might point to the work of artists such as Constantin Brâncuși, Alberto Giacometti, Kazimir Malevich, Pablo Picasso, Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Anthony Caro and Richard Serra .

Contemporaneity in Mitoraj’s art is also manifested in the form of deconstruction , the equating of form with content, introspection and self-definition. The squares appearing in the artist’s sculptures also symbolise contemporary art, whilst the transformation of the body into abstraction is, in turn, a reference to Cubism. References to Henry Moore and his ‘air sculpture’ can be seen in the artist’s work, whilst references to Henri Matisse can also be found ; it seems that Igor Mitoraj shared the artist’s desire for the viewer to look at the work whilst simultaneously seeing something beyond it, so that it might evoke a wave of associations.

It can therefore be said that Igor Mitoraj’s art falls within the most fundamental tenet of contemporary art . It elevates form to an absolute, whilst remaining—one might say obsessively—committed to the idea of beauty. It arouses surprise, raising questions to which each viewer must find their own answers.

At the same time, it is worth noting that the artist has managed to resist other dominant trends in art, such as conceptualism, minimalism, abstraction and figurative art, whilst remaining true to himself and to an internal, coherent creative logic.

Christianity, Eastern religions and… Mexico

Igor Mitoraj could be described as an ‘artist of paradox’, masterfully combining in his work themes as far removed from one another as antiquity and the modern age. He was also able to incorporate into his works characteristics typical of Aztec art, elements alluding to Christianity, and even elements of the East.

The trip to Mexico which the artist undertook in the 1970s resulted, above all , in the enormous scale on which he created his sculptures. An observant viewer will notice in some of Mitoraj’s works Aztec facial features and the eye shape typical of the peoples of Mexico . It is hard not to notice the grandeur of the master’s works.

Although the artist never travelled to India, being fascinated by the Orient he often remarked that Hindu sculpture came closest to the idea of divinity. The heads without bandages, characteristic of Mitoraj’s work, can be described as Buddhist . They offer an alternative to the mutilated, bandaged heads of classical form. They urge us to rise above the mundane, to transcend human nature, and enable us to attain inner peace by recreating the Buddha’s path to enlightenment.

Christian elements, in turn, can be seen in works such as *Memory*, *The Annunciation* and *The Angelic Gates*. They allude to a possible message in the artist’s sculptures: beauty is a reflection of God , as well as the hope of salvation. Suffering, so deeply ingrained in Christianity, manifests itself in Mitoraj’s work in the form of cracked skin, mutilations, missing parts and deep, geometric wounds, which in turn bring to mind the Renaissance techniques of Matthias Grünewald as seen in his work *The Crucifixion*.

The artist does not live by sculpture alone

The best way to summarise the creative output of Igor Mitoraj, one of the greatest Polish artists in the history of art, is to supplement the above outline with a few words on the other fields in which he was active.

For Igor Mitoraj was not only an outstanding sculptor, but also a painter . He created prints and paintings which he called ‘icons’, using the ancient technique of encaustic painting , known, amongst other things, from the frescoes in Pompeii and Byzantine icons, which involves applying paint mixed with beeswax (or natural resin), with the addition of pigment and turpentine. In the artist’s prints , in turn, the influence of Tadeusz Kantor was particularly evident.

Another important field of art for Igor Mitoraj was opera set design , often created using synthetic resin, original in style and significantly departing from generally accepted conventions.

Nor should we forget that Igor Mitoraj began his career by… creating jewellery from precious metals and gemstones . These pieces feature motifs so characteristic of the artist’s work, such as the shapes of the human body and bandages.

Igor Mitoraj – a champion of antiquity, a representative of the modern age, but also… a ‘Renaissance man’, upholding a single, overriding value in every field of art.

Beauty.

*Igor Mitoraj was given the name Jerzy at his christening; he changed it to Igor in 1968 following his emigration to France. It was also at that time that he was adopted by the French writer Jane Gaillot (Coriola) and took her surname (merely as a formality). Coriola was his friend’s aunt.

Chronology of major exhibitions

1967 – Kraków, Krzysztofory Gallery
1976 – Paris, Galerie La Hune
1977 – Berlin, Galerie Maison
Paris, Galerie Artcurial
1978 – Lugano, Galleria Gübelin
Zurich, Galerie Dovat
1979 - The Hague, Galerie Studio 40
Marseille, Galerie Bornan
1980 - Amsterdam, Galerie Mathilde
Geneva, Galerie G. Bach
Hamburg, Galerie Levy
1981 – Cologne, Kunstmesse
1982 – Monte Carlo, La Roccabella
1983 – Freiburg, Galerie Artcurial
Saint-Tropez, Galerie Cupillard
1984 – Hamburg, Galerie Levy, Igor Mitoraj. Sculptures, drawings
Rome, Galleria Toninelli
1985 - Metz, Maison de la Culture
Milan, Compagnia del Disegno
Rome, Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo
Palermo, Galleria La Tavolozza
Portofino, Galleria Civica
1986 – Geneva, Galerie Pierre Huber
Paris, Galerie La Hune, Igor Mitoraj – Sculptures 1976–1986
1987 – Basel, Galerie Valente
Florence, Palazzo Strozzi
Milan, Igor Mitoraj – Sculpture 1987
Rome, Galleria Due Ci
1988 - Madrid, Levy Gallery
1989 - Barcelona, Sala Gaspar Gallery
New York, New York Academy of Art, Igor Mitoraj – Sculptures
1990 - Dallas, The Gerald Peters Gallery, Igor Mitoraj – Sculptures and Drawings
1991 - Milan, Castello Sforzesco
New York, The M&I. Rayburn Foundation
Paris, Galerie Jean-Gabriel Mitterrand, Têtes de Igor Mitoraj
1992 – London, Berkeley Square Fine Art Gallery
1993 – Kraków, Jagiellonian University
Warsaw, Kordegarda Gallery
1994 – Barcelona, Joan Gaspar Gallery
Madrid, Levy Gallery
1995 – Forte dei Marmi, Galleria Contini
Macerata, Igor Mitoraj – Images of the City
New York, Marisa del Re Gallery, Igor Mitoraj – Bitter
Tear of Aphrodite
1997 - Milan, Biblioteca di via Senato, Mitoraj. The Garden of the Muses
Pietrasanta, St Augustine’s Church and Piazza Duomo
Rome, Polish Institute
1998 - Frankfurt, Die Galerie, Opernplatz
1999 - Athens, Zoumboulakis Galleries, Glancing at the Century
Florence, Boboli Gardens and Palazzo Pitti, Igor Mitoraj. Dei ed eroi
2000 - San Marino, Republic of San Marino, Historic Centre, Mitoraj: nostalgia del mito
Toronto, Miriam Schiell Gallery, Recent Bronzes
Venice, Galleria Contini, Mitoraj miti incrociati
2001 - Lausanne, Olympic Museum, Igor Mitoraj, New Mythology
2002 - Darmstadt, Mathildenhöhe, Mitoraj. Sculptures
Massa Marittima, Torre del Lago Archaeological Museum, Puccini, set design and costumes,
for *Manon Lescaut*
2003 - Poznań, National Museum, Old Market Square
Kraków, International Cultural Centre and Main Market Square
2004 - Warsaw, Royal Castle, National Museum, Presidential Gallery,
Kordegarda Gallery
Paris, JGM Galerie, Sculptures: Cité perdue, Jardin des Tuileries, Monumental Sculptures
Rome, Mercati di Traiano, Mitoraj at the Mercati di Traiano
2005 - Venice, Musei Civici Veneziani, Ca’Pesaro, Igor Mitoraj. Sculptures
2006 – Torre del Lago, Puccini Festival, set design and costumes for *Tosca*
2007 – Palermo, Loggiato San Bartolomeo, Igor Mitoraj. Angels, Myths and Heroes
Madrid, Arte en la calle, Igor Mitoraj. El mito perdido
2008 - Venice, Galleria Contini, BiancoNero
2009 - Warsaw, Fabryka Trzciny, Lux in Tenebris
2010 - Paris, Mitoraj. Un sculpteur à la Défense
Aix-en-Provence, Mitoraj Monumental
Florence, Giardino di Boboli, set design and costumes for Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida
2011 - Agrigento, Valle dei Templi
2012 – Frankfurt, University, Igor Mitoraj. Sculptures
2013 – Verona, Museo di Castelvecchio, Mitoraj. Sculptures
2014 – Pisa, Piazza del Duomo, Mitoraj. Angeli
2015 - Pietrasanta, Piazza Duomo and the Monastery Complex of St Augustine, Mitoraj. Mito e Musica
Venice, Galleria Contini, Omaggio a Mitoraj

Key dates in the life of Igor Mitoraj

26 March 1944 – Igor Mitoraj was born in Oederan, Germany

1947 – arrived in Grojec with his mother

1952–1959 – attended primary school in Grojec

1959–1964 – studied at the State Secondary School of Fine Arts in Bielsko-Biała, specialising in artistic weaving

1963 – death of his stepfather, Czesław Mitoraj

1964–1965 – worked at the Municipal Retail Trade Organisation in Katowice

21 October 1965–1966 – worked at the Cultural Centre of the Chemical Works in Oświęcim as a works artist (this likely refers to the position of works artist in the art studio of the ‘Oświęcim’ Chemical Works)

1966–1968 – studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków

1968 – travelled to France and stayed in Paris, from where Igor travelled throughout Europe (particularly to Italy), to the United States and to Mexico

1985 – settled permanently in Pietrasanta (Italy) and bought a house

6 October 2014 – died at a château in the south of France following a long battle with cancer