Igor Mitoraj

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Igor Mitoraj was born on 26 March 1944 in Oederan, a small town in Saxony, to a Polish mother and a French father. He spent his youth in Poland, near Krakow. After studying at an art school in Bielsko-Biała, at the age of nineteen he enrolled in the faculty of painting at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts where, in his final three years, he attended the courses held by Tadeusz Kantor (1914-1990), a famous painter, director and theatrical set designer. In 1967 he took part, with other students at the Academy, in a collective exhibition at the Galeria Krzysztofory in Krakow. In 1968, following Kantor’s advice, Mitoraj left Poland and went to Paris to broaden his cultural education. In the same year he enrolled in the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. The great success of his first important personal exhibition organized in 1976 at the Galerie La Hune in Paris encouraged him to dedicate himself exclusively to sculpture. In the same period, he was awarded the “Prix de la sculpture de Montrouge”. The French culture minister of the time provided him with a studio in Montmartre in the Bateau Lavoir district and the following year he was invited to take part in the XLII Venice Biennale. In 1987 he bought a large atelier in Pietrasanta and, in 1989, he presented his works for the first time at the New York Academy of Art. In the following years he held numerous personal exhibitions and received invitations to exhibit in the most important international museums; at the same time, he also received prestigious commissions for realizing monumental sculptures in the main metropolises. His works were installed in Milan, Rome, London, Paris, Atlanta and Tokyo. Igor Mitoraj died in Paris on 6 October 2014. In 2016 an exhibition was held in the prestigious archaeological site of Pompei where around thirty of Mitoraj’s extraordinary monumental sculptures were displayed thus fulfilling his great dream. Source: www.igormitoraj.com