Sculpture

Igor Mitoraj (1944-2014), "Asclepius" (subject created in 1988) Bronze with a nuanced antique green patina, signed MITORAJ below the chest in the lower right corner and numbered on the back A719/1000 HC. Height: 38 cm. Travertine base, height: 10 cm. Total height: 48 cm (in very good original condition) (The following article is partly inspired by the text published in "Igor Mitoraj, Sculpture," published by ART-OBJET, Paris, 1988) Igor Mitoraj lives "under the shock of sensations…". He appeals to our memory, the great memory of Western history, this collective and omnidirectional memory which, beyond generations, events… and the exhumations of works that contribute to strengthening it, makes our history. A connoisseur and medium of this vast memory, the artist obeys his nostalgia. He becomes its archaeologist and diviner. From the outset, his work displays great aesthetic and formal maturity. It bears witness to a complex melancholy for the artistic vestiges of Antiquity and the Greek world. He embraces the invention of an idealized antiquity, without any intention of imitation. The heart appears on the chests of his heroes, in small square openings… It is a reminder of memories, emotions, and feelings, sometimes distant, but so intense and so present within us that it becomes flesh of our own flesh. In marble or bronze, this heart beats. It is truly alive. It thus contains our dreams, the lived experience of our happy or thwarted destinies, our unconfessed secrets. A true memory, it influences the trajectory of our lives. It is the soul of these seemingly inert body fragments.