Igor Mitoraj - Selected Press

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Igor Mitoraj Selected Press


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Igor Mitoraj, photo: Jacek Gruszczynski/ Forum

Igor Mitoraj was a sculptor. He was born on 26th March, 1944, and died on 6th October, 2014. His sculptures stand in Paris, Rome, Milan, Lausanne, London, Kraków, and Warsaw.

Igor Mitoraj spent most of his life in the West, mainly in France and Italy. The Colombian sculptor Fernando Pole Bolero, one of the most expensive contemporary artists in the world, urged him to buy a house in Pietrasanta, the Italian capital of marble, city of sculptors, where artists such as Michelangelo worked. Mitoraj considered this Italian studio ‘his place on Earth’ though he had lived in Paris, tried to settle in Mexico to learn the art of the Aztecs, and travelled around Greece studying ancient works of art. Antiquity was one of the main sources of inspiration for the artist. His sculptures make direct references to the mythology and history of Greece and Rome, sometimes contained already in the title: Icarus, Centauro, Eros, Mars, Gorgon, Paesaggio Ithaka. As art critics have noted, while evoking the beauty and perfect proportions of classical sculptures, Mitoraj re-interpreted them in a contemporary way. He visualised the imperfection of human nature by deliberately damaging and cracking the surface of statues. Mitoraj’s style is now being recognised by art lovers around the world. The sculptures’ lips, which always have the shape of those of the artist, are among the characteristic features of his works, serving as a sort of an informal ‘signature’. Igor Mitoraj was born on 26th March, 1944 in Oederan in the Ore Mountains, and was the son of a Polish forced labourer and a French prisoner of war, an officer of the Foreign Legion. When the war was over, he returned to his grandparents in Poland with his mother. Mitoraj spent his childhood and youth in Grojec. After graduating from the Art School in Bielsko-Biała, he was 4


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admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in 1963, where he studied painting under the direction of Tadeusz Kantor. In 1968, after obtaining a degree, Mitoraj went to Paris to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts. He started there as a painter and graphic artist; in 1976 he had an exhibition in the La Hune gallery in the Latin Quarter, linked to the bookshop of the same name. Later he took up sculpture. It was not long before he was offered to prepare an exhibition for the ArtCurial gallery in Paris, managed by the nephew of the then French President Mitterand. In order to prepare the works for this exhibition, Mitoraj spent a year in the centre of bronze foundries and marble masons in Pietrasanta, Italy. There he created his first works made of bronze, as well as his first monumental sculptures of white marble from the nearby Carrara. Mitoraj is considered one of the greatest contemporary sculptors. His works can be found in dozens of museums, foundations and headquarters of the largest corporations in the world. After the exhibition in the ArtCurial in 1977 Mitoraj’s sculptures and drawings have been shown at 120 solo exhibitions throughout the world. His sculptures, often of gigantic size, stand in emblematic points of many cities – including Paris (La Defense), Rome, Milan, Lausanne, London, Kraków, Scheveningen near The Hague, in the US and Japan. In an interview, the artist recalled his first years as an emigrant with melancholy: “I find it absurd when someone says that I have made it in life. I have worked for my success for over 30 years. I earn money with art and it gives me freedom. I have indeed been very lucky, because I have never had to ask for my works to be shown in galleries and I have never been forced to put them out to tender, but before I became free, I had to go through the mill. When I first started my artistic career, I was earning a living by carrying pianos and furniture to the sixth floors of Parisian buildings.” In 2009 Mitoraj created the so-called Angelic doors for the Church of Our Lady of Grace in Warsaw’s Old Town. He had previously created similar doors for the Santa Maria degli Angeli Church in Rome. According to the artist, ‘some may be shocked by the completely unconventional image of the Madonna, looking down towards two angels captured in motion’. On 5th October, 2005, Mirotaj was honoured by the then Minister of Culture Waldemar Dąbrowski with a Gold Medal for Merit to Culture Gloria Artis during a ceremony in the Kraków City Hall. On 24th April, 2012, he was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta by the President Bronisław Komorowski ‘for outstanding contribution to Polish and world culture, for creative and artistic achievements’; the honouring ceremony took place on 3rd May, 2012. Source: PPA, October 2014, transl. Bozhana Nikolova, April 2015

http://culture.pl/en/artist/igor-mitoraj

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MIA Launches Campaign to Acquire Eros, a Monumental Outdoor Sculpture for the Community In celebration of the MIA’s 100th Birthday Year, our curators searched for a monumental outdoor sculpture that would reference the museum’s historic art collections and be a new masterpiece for the community. Handsome, mysterious, and poignant, Eros is sure to become an icon for the museum and Minneapolis. To mark the Birthday Year, the MIA is raising funds from the community to purchase this remarkable contemporary sculpture. It’s your chance to play a tangible, meaningful role during the museum’s centennial celebration, as this new work will change the face of the “people’s museum” for generations to come. Our goal is to raise at least $1 million to bring this work into our collection. Donations large and small are happily accepted. Learn more about Eros and make a donation at artsmia.org/eros (Pictured: a mock-up of Eros in his future, permanent location. See the real thing, starting today, in his temporary home in front of the museum’s Third Avenue entrance!)

http://new.artsmia.org/100/mia-launches-campaign-to-acquire-eros-a-monumental-outdoor-sculpture-for-thecommunity/

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Join our campaign to acquire Eros, a contemporary sculpture with a classical twist, for the community. In celebration of the MIA’s 100th Birthday Year, our curators searched for a monumental outdoor sculpture that would reference the museum’s historic art collections and be a new masterpiece for the community. Handsome, mysterious, and poignant, Eros is sure to become an icon for the museum and Minneapolis. The arrival of Eros sparks an opportunity for community members to invest in the future of the MIA by donating any amount to its purchase. It’s your chance to celebrate the museum’s 100th Birthday Year and play a tangible and meaningful role during the museum’s centennial celebration. This new work will change the face of the “people’s museum” for generations to come. Our goal is to raise as least $1 million to bring this work into the collection. Donations large and small are accepted. Text the word “EROS” to 243725 to donate! happily 7


Visualization of proposed installation for Igor Mitoraj’s “Eros” at Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Art credit: Igor Mitoraj (Poland, 1944–2014), Eros, 1999, bronze, 7’ high x 12’ long x 9.5’ wide

About the Artwork Eros is a colossal bronze sculpture by the Polish-born artist Igor Mitoraj, who used the timeless artistic language of ancient Greece to address personal and contemporary issues in a new and original way. Eros, depicted bandaged and marred by cracks, points out the contradiction between the ideals of strength and beauty and the inherent fragility of the human condition. Life is precious because it is fleeting. And love causes both joy and heartache. The post-modern monumental scale of Eros also suggests the glories and failures of entire civilizations.

About the Artist An internationally renowned sculptor, Igor Mitoraj (1944–2014) was raised in Poland, lived in France, and worked in a studio in Italy near the marble quarries of Carrara. Widely admired and exhibited in Europe, artwork by Mitoraj is less known in the United States. With Eros, the MIA has become one of the few American museums with a sculpture of this scale and importance.

http://new.artsmia.org/get-behind-something-big/

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Dylan Thomas took a photo of “Eros,” a $1 million sculpture by Igor Mitoraj, on display Tuesday outside the 3rd Avenue entrance to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

With his dark eyes and wavy bronze hair, a monumental head of “Eros,” the Greek god of love, is destined to be a signature attraction at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, where it was temporarily installed this week. The museum is asking the public to help pay for the $1 million sculpture by Polish-born Igor Mitoraj in celebration of the museum’s 100th birthday this year. It has already raised more than $300,000 and is hoping to raise the rest in contributions of any size — including pennies from kids. There will be donation boxes in the museum, a dedicated website, cellphone links and special events during a gala weekend June 26-28. “We wanted something to commemorate our centennial,” said Julianne Amendola, the museum’s director of advancement. “We could have done a separate campaign, but this is really about getting the public involved in the art collection.” The hollow bronze head is 12 feet long, 7 feet tall and weighs about 4,000 pounds. 9


Made in 1999 at the artist’s studio in the northern Italian city of Pietrasanta, the sculpture is a poetic evocation of the beauty, suffering and fragility of human life. In classical mythology, Eros was often depicted as a blindfolded boy to signal the way people fall headlong into the passion of love. In Mitoraj’s interpretation, Eros is older and the blindfold has fallen from his eyes, a hint that he has seen something of life’s inevitable tragedy, too. “The bandages are the expression of my past in Poland, where even now there is still a great deal of suffering,” Mitoraj once said. Trained in Poland and Paris, Mitoraj is known throughout Europe for heroic bronze and marble sculptures of fragmentary human figures, especially heads and torsos, whose crusty, broken surfaces suggest the ravages of time. His work has been installed at the Venice Biennale, the British Museum, Boboli Garden in Florence and Tuileries in Paris, among other sites. In the United States, it can be found at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and Citygarden park in St. Louis. Now temporarily situated on a plaza outside the museum’s 3rd Avenue entrance, “Eros” will be moved in late June to its permanent home on the museum’s front lawn at the corner of 24th Street and 3rd Avenue S.

http://www.startribune.com/will-public-love-this-1m-statue-mia-hopes-so/301568291/ 10


"Eros" at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has a new outdoor sculpture that'll have people doing a double take. Hoping to make the massive bronze sculpture "Eros" a symbol of the museum, the museum announced a community fundraising campaign to acquire the contemporary sculpture with a goal of raising at least $1 million. More than $300,000 already has been contributed to the fund. Currently on loan to the MIA, "Eros" (1999) was created by Polish-born artist Igor Mitoraj and is temporarily located at the museum's Third Avenue entrance. It eventually will be permanently installed in front of the museum on the corner of 24th Street and Third Avenue South. The sculpture depicts the head of Eros -- the Greek god of love --on its side covered in cracks. According to a press release, the colossal piece of art (it is 7 feet high by 12 feet long by 91/2 feet wide) represents the "contradiction between the ideals of strength and beauty, and the inherent fragility of the human condition." The arrival of "Eros" and its fundraising campaign is part of the museum's year-long 100th birthday celebration. More information about donating to "Eros" can be found at artsmia.org/eros.

http://www.twincities.com/entertainment/ci_28005973/eros-sculpture-debuts-at-minneapolis-institute-arts

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Twelve feet long, seven feet tall, weighing about 4,000 pounds, the hollow bronze head is “Eros,” named for the Greek god of love.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has a big head. You can see it for yourself outside the museum’s Third Avenue entrance. If you want, you can help pay for it. Twelve feet long, seven feet tall, weighing about 4,000 pounds, the hollow bronze head is “Eros,” named for the Greek god of love. In ancient times, he was sometimes depicted as a chubby, winged boy holding a bow and arrow and wearing a blindfold, symbolizing the randomness of where love might strike. (The Romans called him Cupid.) In this monumental 1999 sculpture by Polish-born artist Igor Mitoraj (1944-2014), he’s an adult, cracked and ravaged by time, and his blindfold has slipped, revealing eyes that have seen too much. Suggesting the glories and failures of entire civilizations, he’s our own Ozymandias. Referencing the museum’s historic collections, he hints at the treasures inside. He’s also a nod to the handsome Greek columns on the original building that faces Washburn Fair Oaks Park. Mitoraj’s work is well-known in Europe, less so in the United States. The MIA will be one of the few American museums with a Mitoraj sculpture of this scale and significance. The museum has raised more than $300,000 of the minimum $1 million needed to make “Eros” part of its permanent collection, an icon for the museum and the city. (Think “Spoonbridge and Cherry” South.) No contribution is too small and certainly not too large. Go here to donate, or drop a little something in one of the donation boxes in the museum. https://www.minnpost.com/artscape/2015/05/giant-eros-sculpture-minneapolis-own-ozymandias-more-mia100th-year-happenings

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MIA launches campaign to add "monumental" sculpture April 28, 2015 BY: DYLAN THOMAS

The addition of Igor Mitoraj’s “Eros” is planned for the museum’s 100th-anniversary year WHITTIER — The Minneapolis Institute of Arts aims to raise over $1 million to add a new outdoor sculpture by the Polish-born sculptor Igor Mitoraj to its permanent collection. A bronze weighing approximately 2 tons, “Eros” arrived in a crate Monday from the late artist’s studio in Carrara, Italy, and was temporarily placed on a wooden platform outside the museum’s 3rd Avenue entrance. In a little over a month the museum plans to move “Eros” to what’s hoped will be its permanent location at the corner of 24th Street and 3rd Avenue, on the northeast edge of the museum’s campus. 13


Jennifer Olivarez, curator of decorative arts and design, said the museum wanted to add a “monumental” outdoor piece to mark the museum’s 100th birthday year in 2015. “Eros,” a piece by a contemporary artist that evokes classical themes, seemed a perfect choice for a museum with an encyclopedic collection spanning centuries, Olivarez said. Eros is the Greek god of love — a predecessor and counterpart to the plump infant Cupid of Roman mythology — and is sometimes depicted wearing a blindfold, as he is in Mitoraj’s sculpture. In a post-modern twist on classical sculpture, Mitoraj’s “Eros” appears cracked, as if it had just shattered or had maybe been broken and pieced back together. “The fact that this is he is cracked shows the complexity of love, that it can be devastating as well as uplifting,” Olivarez said. Mitoraj, who was born in Poland but lived in France and later worked out of a studio in Italy, died in October. His work is not as well known in the United States as it is in Europe, where his sculptures have appeared in the Venice Biennale and are installed in England’s Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Tuileries Gardens in Paris, among other locations. The museum has already raised about $300,000 for the sculpture and aims to wrap up the fundraising campaign by early fall, Julianne Amendola, the museum’s director of development, said. Amendola said the campaign would be a focus of the museum’s June gala. The museum will also accept donations in person or online. For more information, go to artsmia.org/eros.

http://www.journalmpls.com/news/art-beat/mia-launches-campaign-to-add-monumental-sculpture

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MIA Celebrates 100th Birthday With Massive Sculpture April 28, 2015 3:04 PM

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is celebrating its 100th birthday by kicking off a $1 million fundraising campaign. The money will be used to pay for a new outdoor sculpture that, right now, is out in front of the museum. It’s permanent location will be at the corner of 24th Street and Third Avenue South. Polish-born artist Igor Mitoraj created the huge bronze sculpture Eros, of the Greek god of love, in 1999. “The bandage, which is something that’s associated with the god Eros, has slipped from his eyes, and he has cracks all over his head,” Minneapolis Institute of Arts curator Jennifer Komar Olivarez said. “It really speaks to how love is something that we think of as wonderful, but it can also be really tragic or devastating.” More than $300,000 has already been donated for the sculpture. If you’d like to make a donation, click here. http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2015/04/28/mia-celebrates-100th-birthday-with-massive-sculpture/

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The big, bronze head worth $1M: Meet Minneapolis museum’s newest attraction

It is 12 feet long, 7 feet tall, weighs 4,000 pounds, and could become a permanent fixture at the Minneapolis Museum of Art if $1 million can be raised. Having arrived on Tuesday, the sculpture named “Eros” – completed in 1999 – will be on temporary display outside the south Minneapolis museum’s 3rd Avenue entrance. But the hope is that the work, by the late, internationally-renowned Polish sculptor Igor Mitoraj, will remain at the MIA for good to celebrate its centenary this year, with the museum launching a campaign to raise a further $700,000 towards a $1 million goal. “It’s your chance to celebrate the museum’s 100th birthday year and play a tangible and meaningful role during the museum’s centennial celebration,” it says on the fundraising page. “This new work will change the face of the ‘people’s museum’ for generations to come.”

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The museum says acquiring the work would make it a “masterpiece for the community” that will become “an icon” for Minneapolis. The MIA said the bronze sculpture will remain outside the entrance until the end June, when it will hopefully be moved to a permanent home on the front lawn at the corner of 3rd Avenue and 24th Street. “We wanted something to commemorate our centennial,” Julianne Amendola, director of advancement, told the Star Tribune. “We could have done a separate campaign, but this is really about getting the public involved in the art collection.”

The sculpture of Eros Mitoraj specialized in “fractured anatomies” and the bandaged heads of which “Eros” is one of several examples, The Guardian reports. The MIA told BringMeTheNews the Minneapolis sculpture is from Mitoraj’s studio, and is being sold by an unnamed dealer following the sculptor’s death last year. It is one of a series of “bandaged head” works completed by the sculptor, and closely resembles one of his most celebrated pieces “Eros Bendato Screpolato” (meaning Eros Blindfolded Cracked), which was described by The Guardian as one of Mitoraj’s “most evocative projects” after it was installed at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, England, in 2009. Mitoraj is known for his post-modern twist on the classical style, with auction house Sotheby’s writing of “Eros Bendato Screpolato”: “Mitoraj eschews a human scale creating sculptures which pertain, rather, to the colossal. Like the Colossus of Rhodes, it is as though the present work has fallen a vestige of a civilization left shattered.” The MIA says that using Eros, the Greek god of love, as a being both bandaged and cracked, “points out the contradiction between the ideals of strength and beauty, and the inherent fragility of the human condition.” You can donate to the fundraising drive here. The museum will also house donation boxes and will hold events at a gala weekend June 26-28.

http://bringmethenews.com/2015/04/28/the-big-bronze-head-worth-1m-meet-minneapolis-museums-newest-attraction/

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WANNA HELP MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ARTS PAY $1 MILLION FOR ITS NEW 'EROS' SCULPTURE? MARY ABBE | Updated 4/28/2015

Minneapolis Institute of Arts unveils a massive sculpture — and a fundraising plan to pay for it.

'Eros' at MIA Brian Peterson

With his dark eyes and wavy bronze hair, a monumental head of “Eros,” the Greek god of love, is destined to be a signature attraction at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, where it was temporarily installed this week. The museum is asking the public to help pay for the $1 million sculpture by Polish-born Igor Mitoraj in celebration of the museum’s 100th birthday this year. It has already raised more than $300,000 and is hoping to raise the rest in contributions of any size — including pennies from kids. There will be donation boxes in the museum, a dedicated website, cellphone links and special events at a gala weekend June 26-28. 18


“We wanted something to commemorate our centennial,” said Julianne Amendola, the museum’s director of advancement. “We could have done a separate campaign, but this is really about getting the public involved in the art collection.” The hollow bronze head is 12 feet long and 7 feet tall and weighs about 4,000 pounds. Made in 1999 at the artist’s studio in the northern Italian city of Pietrasanta, the sculpture is a poetic evocation of the beauty, suffering and fragility of human life. In classical mythology, Eros was often depicted as a blindfolded boy to signal the way people fall headlong into the passion of love. In Mitoraj’s interpretation, Eros is older and the blindfold has fallen from his eyes, a hint that he has seen something of life’s inevitable tragedy, too. “The bandages are the expression of my past in Poland, where even now there is still a great deal of suffering,” Mitoraj once said. Trained in Poland and Paris, Mitoraj is well known throughout Europe for heroic bronze and marble sculptures of fragmentary human figures, especially heads and torsos, whose crusty, broken surfaces suggest the ravages of time. His work has been installed at the Venice Biennale, the British Museum, the Boboli Garden in Florence and the Tuileries in Paris, among other sites. In the United States it can be found at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the Citygarden park in St. Louis, Mo. Now temporarily situated on a plaza outside the museum’s 3rd Avenue entrance, “Eros” will be moved in late June to its permanent home on the museum’s front lawn at the corner of 3rd Avenue and 24th Street.

http://www.vita.mn/crawl/301572051.html

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Notable collectors of the Polish born sculptor's work include TRH Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, H. R. H. Princess Ira Von Furstemberg, Sir and Lady George Iacobescu and Mr and Mrs Wafic Rida Said.

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SABATO 9 MAGGIO 2015

QN IL GIORNO il Resto del Carlino LA NATIONALE

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Exhibition by Polish sculptor Mitoraj in Italy 21.04.2015 14:49 A major exhibition of sculptures by the Polish artist Igor Mitoraj is on in the Italian town of Pietrasanta, Tuscany, where he lived for thirty years.

A sculpture by Igor Mitoraj. Photo: wikimedia commons/Ellywa The initial idea for the display had been outlined by Mitoraj before his death last October together with the town’s mayor Domenico Lombardi. In addition to the artist’s monumental bronze sculptures, which are placed in the town’s piazzas, Mitoraj’s paintings, drawings and set designs for opera productions are on show in the former Sant ‘Agostino monastery complex. The exhibition remains on view till the end of August. Born in 1944, Mitoraj graduated from the department of painting at the Fine Arts Academy in Kraków. He continued his studies in Paris, taking up sculpture as his primary field of artistic activity. In 1983 he moved to Pietrasanta, where he established a second home and a studio. He used marble and bronze as his materials. His sculptures can be found in many Italian cities, in Paris, London, Japan, the United States and Poland and include the bronze doors and a statue of John the Baptist for the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome and the ‘Angelic Doors’ for the Jesuit Church in Warsaw. He held a high Polish state distinction – the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Reborn Poland. Date Published – 21st April 2015 http://www.thenews.pl/1/11/Artykul/204234,Exhibition-by-Polish-sculptor-Mitoraj-in-Italy

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