Donated by the artist, Private collection, since 1992
Andros, Museum of Contemporary Art-Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, Glancing at the Century, 28 June – 20 September 1998, pp. 158-159, ill. p. 159
David Cohen, “Internationalism, Dossier: Yorkshire, England,” Sculpture, vol. XXII, no. 3, May-June 1993, pp. 36-37
Igor Mitoraj, trained painter but self-taught sculptor, studied the ancient masters and the pre-Columbian art, by immersing himself in their heritage. In 1979, during a trip to Carrara, where the most famous Italian marble comes from, he decided to settle there, close to the material he so admired. There, he learnt to manage with ease plaster, terracotta, bronze and marble, investing with the same passion his body and mind in this manual work.
Mitoraj’s work stands out thanks to the coexistence of serenity with concern, classical canons of Beauty with deep wounds, Antiquity with Surrealism. However, these probable influences are solely starting points for the artist, who –from the very beginning of his career– produced an absolutely personal, timeless and unclassifiable art. In any case, human figure has always been the focus of his attention, which he rendered with a faithful and meticulous aesthetic, insisting however on mutilating it, like the statues which, discovered many centuries later, lack various parts of their bodies. If it is true that Mitoraj conceived the entire silhouette before cutting it, then he imposed a tragic fate to the beauty he created, marked by sorrow and mortality. But as terrible as this damnation may be, it does not take away anything from the harmonious sensuality of the figure and the charm of young faces and bodies with perfect proportions.
Soon, Mitoraj realized that he had to create monumental scale works to better express his vision. Inspired by Nara, the capital of Japan almost throughout the 8th century AD, he carried out a giant mask-like face: its eyes were lacking the pupils and its outline seemed to have been cut with scissors. He made sure to keep the cut traces of the cast, destroying thus the smooth and fine appearance and highlighting the tragic aspect of this face, tilted to one side. The expressionless eyes and mouth, the irregular outline and the viewer’s possibility to see the back of the sculpture give the Lights of Nara an impression of damaged perfection, of a utopian world in ruins.
.
