Igor Mitoraj
<p>Igor Mitoraj was born in 1944 of a Polish mother and a French father in Oederan, Germany.</p>
<p>He spends his youth in Krakow where he studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. Under the tutelage of Tadeusz Kantor, he is introduced to contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Lichtenstein, Merz and Klein.</p>
<p>In 1968 he arrives in Paris to continue his studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des BeauxArts (National High School of Fine Arts).</p>
<p>A lengthy stay in Mexico in the early seventies allows him to study South American and Aztec cultures.</p>
<p>In 1976, his first personal exhibition at the La Hune Gallery in Paris has an enormous success. He is awarded important prizes such as the “Montrouge Prix de la Sculpture” and is encouraged by the French minister of Culture who provides him with a studio at Montmartre.</p>
<p>Mitoraj travels extensively, in particular to New York and Greece. After a visit to Pietrasanta in Tuscany, the artist discovers marble as an ideal material for his sculptures, in addition to his previous use of terracotta and bronze.</p>
<p>In 1983, he chooses to make Italy his home and opens a studio in Pietrasanta, though he continues to maintain his Paris atelier. In 1986, Mitoraj accepts an invitation to participate in the XLII International Biennial Art Exhibition in Venice.</p>
<p>His works can be seen in London at the British Museum and Canary Wharf, at Bamberg and Krakow, in Paris at La Défence, at the Uffizi Museum and the Boboli Gardens in Florence, in Piazza del Carmine and the Scala Theatre in Milan as well as in Rome in Piazza Monte Grappa and Piazza Mignanelli.</p>
<p>In 2004, Mitoraj exhibits his monumental sculptures at the Tuileries Gardens of Paris, at the Mercati di Traiano in Rome and at the Royal Palace of Warsaw.</p>
<p>In 2011 his monumental sculptures are exhibited in the beautiful context of Temple Valley, in Sicily, while in the spring 2012 the solo exhibition Memoriae is unveiled, during the “Ravello Festival 2012”, in the amazing location of the Amalfitane Coast.</p>
<p>The artist has worked between Italy and France until his death in Paris in October 2014.</p>
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<p>Mitoraj's sculptural style is rooted in the classical tradition with its focus on the well modelled torso. However, Mitoraj introduced a post-modern twist with ostentatiously truncated limbs, emphasising the damage sustained by most genuine classical sculptures. Often his works aim to address the questions of human body, its beauty and fragility as well as deeper aspects of human nature, which as a result of the passing of time undergo degeneration.</p>
