Igor Mitoraj:Testa Addormentata

The life of Igor Mitoraj, one of the most important contemporary sculptors, began in 1944 in a Nazi prisoner of war camp in Oederan, Saxony, as the child of a deported Polish forced labourer and a French prisoner of war. As a survivor of Nazi terror, Mitoraj grew up in Oświęcim, Poland, and studied under Tadeusz Kantor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. The legendary theatre group "Cricot 2", founded by Kantor in 1955, significantly influenced the visual language of Mitoraj's sculptures and scenic productions in the places where they were set up. After 1968, the artist continued to develop his iconic works, which are reminiscent of acrolytic sculptures, fragmented colossal statues or pictorial scenes of pittura metafisica, in Paris, New York and Mexico and celebrated international success. Mitoraj, who died in Paris in 2014, created sculptures that appear fragmented, cut up, wrapped in bandages, wounded and deconstruct the ancient ideal they quote.

Against the backdrop of Mitoraj's life story, the visual language of the sculpture Testa Addormentata (Head in Sleep), described as a poetic combination of Hellenism and Surrealism, materialises as a socially critical commentary. The bandaged and idealised head made of dark patinated bronze resting on the side of an embossed base plate alludes to the ancient goddess Medusa, the sight of whom froze everyone to stone - a theme that Mitoraj has repeatedly explored in his artistic work. The sculptor understands the ambivalence of beauty and monstrosity, which merge in the archetype and fate of Medusa, as a symbol of a destroyed utopia of autonomy and perfection.

(Text: Alexander Ochs / Ulrike Pennewitz)