“Tindaro” – a monumental bronze, which at the beginning of September stood at Plac Trzech Krzyży in Warsaw, was auctioned on Tuesday at the Polswiss sculpture and spatial facilities art. The starting price was PLN 4 million, but at the auction the sculpture reached PLN 6.89 million, including auction fees.
– This is the artist's absolute price record on the professional auction market. A record that pleases, but is not surprising, because it is the largest and most narrative work of Igor Mitoraj, which has ever been proposed at the auction, in addition with prestigious provenance and history – said Marzena Karpińska, vice president of the Polswiss auction house, the sculpture will remain in the public space of the city. – Where? We still have to wait for this information – added Karpińska.
Until the end of September, the sculpture can be seen at Plac Trzech Krzyży in Warsaw, before entering the Sheraton Grand hotel – Marta Rydzyńska from Polswiss Art informed PAP.
Four -meter “Tindaro” from patinated bronze, weighing 2.6 tons, was one of 47 objects at Tuesday auction. He came to the capital from France. The sculpture was established in 1997 on the order of the international company KPM; She stood in front of the company's headquarters in the business district of Paris La Défense, among the spectacular architectural solutions of this part of the city.
It belongs to the most magnificent works of Mitoraj. The monumental head of a young man, called Tindaro, refers to Tyndareos, King Sparta and Father Helena Trojan. Mitoraj, inspired by this mythological figure, made several different images. You can see them in various places around the world, including in Piazza Armerina, Sicily, Piazza Dell'anfiteatro in Lukka and in the gardens of Bobola in Florence.
Mitoraj's works combine classic beauty with destruction caused by the passage of time; They show a clear tension between perfection and disability. “Fragmentation is not the result of destruction here, but a procedure that – like the ruins of the ancient world – prompts reflection on the transience, memory and durability of art, but also with great power evokes the sublimity, majesty and heroic of life” – the work in the auction catalog was noted in the description of the work.
A distinctive element of the monumental composition presented is the extensive form of its back: two slender pillars, connected by entabling, spread the sculpture from the inside. The artist placed a relief on them in the form of a bandaged bust – they are a quote from his other work entitled “Argos”, seen from the front and from the back. The pillars are framed by a centrally placed mascaron with winding, curly hair and open lips – evoking associations with the anti -mouth “lips of truth”. It is, in fact, a jellyic motif, also borrowed by an artist from his own achievements. Thanks to these exceptional treatments, “Tindaro” becomes a kind of “sculpture in sculpture” – a kind of artistic self -citatage in which the creator dialogues with himself.
“Ancient art was and is an ideal for me, and also associated with nostalgia behind the lost paradise,” the artist used to say.
Igor Mitoraj (1944-2014), actually Jerzy Makina, a Polish sculptor, emigrant, from 1968 created outside Poland-in France, Germany and Italy. This is one of the most outstanding Polish contemporary sculptors who has gained international publicity. The beginnings of his great career are associated with moving in 1979 to Italy. In the small town of Pietrasant, located at the foot of the Apuan Alps mountain chain, he found everything that was needed for work. The proximity of quarries in Carrara and Monte Altissimo have already made Pietrasant, called “Little Athens”, the seat of such sculptors as Marino Marini or Henry Moore.
There, in the mid -1980s, a well -known Italian art critic and one of the most influential women in Rome Maria Angiolillo. Fascinated by Mitoraj, she helped him organize the first great exhibition that took place in the Castle of the Holy Angel in Rome in 1985. Successful, the show opened the door to the sculptor to an international career and resulted in further important exhibitions in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and the United States.
In addition, the artist received orders for many monumental sculptural projects, such as the karyratides of the Police Prefecture building in Paris, a fountain in Milan or a monument to Piazza Mignanella in Rome.
“Mitoraj models its damaged, divided, damaged sculptures, modeling every fragment – hand, leg, eye, lips, genitals, wings, torso – but this fragmentation reflects the condition of man and society: this” I divided “, personality splitting, human violence over other people and on myself, depth conflicts of consciousness with the subconscious. The self -destructive trends that the unit undergoes in today's world. “Conversazioni Con Igor Mitoraj, L'Enigma della Pietra” (2nd edition, Rome 2004).
The artist himself did not like when his sculptures were accompanied by adjectives such as “mutilated”, “defective” or “defective”. “I don't like the sculpture that you see when you look at, you have to discover it yourself and reach the heart for a long time. I think that art should intrigue the viewer. To be a secret. He can even keep his secret forever,” the sculptor used to say. (PAP)
Anna Bernat
ABE/ Miś/
