Igor Mitoraj (1944-2014)3

1. Igor Mitoraj 3

2. Igor Mitoraj, who has died aged 70, was an artist renowned for his monumental sculptures of fractured heads, isolated limbs and torn torsos. Mitoraj produced ravaged fragments of classical figures which, with a post-modern flourish, referenced the damage inflicted on antiquities by the passing of time. “I feel that a piece of arm or a leg speak far more strongly than a whole body,” he said. His giant marble, terracotta and bronze works — sometimes consisting of merely an outsized chin and mouth, a huge cheekbone and eye or a monstrous face lopped off at the forehead like a cracked egg — appear as if ripped from the pages of history. “I love classical beauty, it gives me energy and hurts me at the same time,” he reflected. “I am attracted and yet upset by beauty.” His works have their greatest impact when paired with dramatic settings. In particular, his nod to Roman and Greek artistry suit the Mediterranean landscape: his Tindaro Screpolato bronze head still sits finely framed by the foliage of Florence’s Boboli Gardens, while in 2011 his towering busts and winged figures peppered the 5th-century ruins at the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento, Sicily. In Britain his works were installed in Canada Square at Canary Wharf; outside the main entrance of the British Museum; and, perhaps most strikingly, in the grounds of Chatsworth, where his Eros Bendato Screpolato — a four-metre-long bronze cracked head wrapped in metal bandages — lay on its side among the autumn leaves in 2009 Igor Mitoraj was born on March 26 1944 in Oederan, Germany, the son of a Polish mother and a French father

14.  Lux in Tenebris

21. Eros Bendato

22. Testa Addormentata 1983  Canary Wharf now has one of the United Kingdom’s largest collections of Public Art

23. Testa Addormentata | 1983 

24. Testa Addormentata | 1983 

27. Città Perduta II 2005

29. The Head of St. John the Baptist

34. Agrigento 2011 Gambe alate Nascita di Venere, 1991

35. Gambe alate

37. Per Adriano (1993),  in front of the Teatro Guimerá, Plaza de la Isla de la Madeira, Santa Cruz de Tenerife

38. Igor Mitoraj’s Centauro