Igor Mitoraj spent most of his life in the West, mainly in France and Italy. The Colombian sculptor Fernando Botero, 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 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.