Igor Mitoraj — La Conversation

La Conversation — The Conversation — is a bronze bas-relief by Igor Mitoraj depicting two classical profile heads facing one another across the surface of the work. It is not a freestanding sculpture but a medal or plaque format: a work conceived in relief, presenting the two faces in a dialogue that is simultaneously ancient and unresolvable. The profiles are fragmentary, worn, as if lifted from an excavation — the faces of two people who have been speaking for millennia and have not finished yet.

The work belongs to a distinct thread within Mitoraj's practice: his engagement with the bas-relief and medal tradition, drawing on the long history of Renaissance portrait medals and classical coin portraiture while inflecting that tradition with his own archaeological sensibility. Where a Renaissance medal might present a single profile — the face of a prince or condottiere in the guise of a Roman emperor — La Conversation places two profiles in confrontation, making the work not a document of individual identity but a study in relation. Two faces, two voices, two fragments of a world that no longer exists — speaking, still, to one another.

The title is simply and precisely descriptive: this is a conversation. But like so much of Mitoraj's work, the simplicity of the title opens into something more complex on inspection. What are these two figures saying? The relief gives us no text, no gesture, no expression readable as emotion — only the formal fact of two faces turned toward one another, their features worn smooth by time, their lips slightly parted in the stillness of bronze. The conversation is eternal because it has no content; it precedes and exceeds any particular exchange.

The Composition: Two Profiles in Bronze

Formally, La Conversation is organised around a bilateral symmetry that is immediately readable and immediately unsettling. Two profile heads face inward toward the centre of the relief, their features almost meeting across the intervening space. The classical treatment of the heads — the long straight nose, the slightly open lips, the idealised brow and jaw — places them firmly within the Hellenistic tradition that Mitoraj had studied and absorbed throughout his career. But the surfaces are not smooth: they are eroded, textured, worked as if by centuries of exposure rather than the sculptor's chisel.

This is the quality that distinguishes Mitoraj's relief work from mere classical pastiche. The fragmentary aesthetic that he had developed across his freestanding bronzes — the broken limbs, the veiled faces, the truncated torsos — translates directly into the bas-relief format. The two heads in La Conversation are not simply classically beautiful; they are also damaged, incomplete, aged. Parts of the surface are roughened, pitted, worn. The effect is of faces that have survived something — time, burial, excavation — and have emerged still facing one another, still in dialogue.

The spatial organisation of the relief creates a specific tension. In a medal or coin profile, the face is presented in strict profile precisely because profile is the format of identity, of the authoritative image: you cannot look into the eyes of a profile, and a profile cannot look back at you. But in La Conversation, each face is directed toward the other rather than toward the viewer. They are not presenting themselves to an external audience; they are absorbed in an exchange from which the viewer is excluded. We see the dialogue but cannot enter it.

The modelling of the relief is typically Mitoraj in its combination of classical assurance and expressive surface. The bone structure of the faces is drawn with authority; the lips, the brow, the jaw all follow the Hellenistic ideal. But the transitions between planes are roughened rather than polished, and the background surface of the plaque carries the same textured, granular quality that characterises Mitoraj's treatment of bronze throughout his mature work. The material speaks of age, of burial and recovery, of the earth from which these faces appear to have been excavated.

Editions and Formats

La Conversation exists in two principal formats that correspond to different functions and different contexts of display. Understanding these formats is essential for collectors approaching the work on the secondary market.

The large bronze plaque format presents the two-profile composition at significant scale — typically in the range of 40–80 cm — suitable for wall display in a domestic or institutional interior. These are sculptural objects of substantial weight and presence, cast in the same dark-patinated bronze as Mitoraj's freestanding works. The relief depth is sufficient to create significant shadow play across the surface, making the work responsive to changes in light throughout the day. Large plaque versions are the rarest format and appear infrequently on the secondary market.

The Médaille La Conversation — the smaller collector medal format — presents the same composition in a more intimate scale, typically 10–20 cm, produced in numbered editions. This format is consistent with Mitoraj's broader engagement with the medal tradition: he produced a series of numbered medal editions throughout his career, many through his Pietrasanta atelier, intended as collector objects that combined sculptural quality with the portability and collectability of the medal format. The Médaille La Conversation is cast with the same care as the large plaques, the detail of the two profiles rendered with full clarity at smaller scale.

All editions were cast at Fonderia Mariani in Pietrasanta, the foundry with which Mitoraj maintained his primary casting relationship from the 1980s onward. Both formats carry the standard Mitoraj signature and edition information: incised or stamped MITORAJ or igor mitoraj, accompanied by the edition number and foundry mark. Editions produced under Mitoraj's direct supervision carry Atelier Mitoraj documentation.

Exhibition History

La Conversation, like many of Mitoraj's relief works, has circulated through the same exhibition contexts that hosted his freestanding bronzes: the major gallery shows in Paris, Rome, and Pietrasanta that punctuated his career; the institutional exhibitions that marked his retrospectives in Poland, France, and Italy; and the specialist medal exhibitions that provided a separate exhibition context for his work in the medal tradition.

Mitoraj's Pietrasanta atelier — established in the 1980s — was the production and distribution centre for his medal and relief editions. The atelier maintained relationships with specialist dealers and gallery networks across Europe, and relief works including La Conversation were distributed through these channels alongside the larger bronze editions. Exhibition appearances at the Galerie Daniel Templon in Paris, where Mitoraj was represented for much of his career, would have included relief works alongside the freestanding sculptures for which he is best known.

In Italy, the relief works appeared at exhibitions in Pietrasanta itself — the town that became Mitoraj's adopted home and which hosts a permanent open-air display of his monumental works — as well as at gallery venues in Florence, Milan, and Rome. The Italian auction houses that now handle La Conversation on the secondary market — Wannenes in Genoa, Pandolfini in Florence, Cambi in Genoa — reflect the concentration of collector interest in northern and central Italy, where Mitoraj's Pietrasanta base gave him a particularly deep market.

In Poland, La Conversation has appeared in the context of the broader Mitoraj retrospective exhibitions held at major museums since his death in 2014. The National Museum in Kraków and the Royal Castle in Warsaw have both hosted significant Mitoraj retrospectives, and the relief and medal works formed part of the comprehensive survey of his output that these exhibitions provided.

Collector and Market Context

On the secondary market, La Conversation occupies a distinctive position among Mitoraj's works. It is significantly rarer than the freestanding bronzes — the Eros Bendato, the Tindaro Screpolato, the Testa di Cavallo — that appear with some regularity at the major European auction houses. Relief and medal formats in general are less frequently offered at auction than freestanding sculpture, and Mitoraj's relief work in particular is concentrated in private collections, many of which have never returned to market.

The Médaille La Conversation represents the more accessible entry point for collectors. These smaller medal editions appear periodically at Italian specialist auction houses — Wannenes, Pandolfini, and Cambi are the primary venues — as well as at specialist medal dealers in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Pricing for documented medal editions typically ranges from a few hundred euros for unattributed examples to several thousand for fully documented series with Atelier Mitoraj certificates.

The large bronze plaque format is considerably rarer and commands commensurately higher prices when it does appear. These works have the scale and presence of significant sculptural objects, and their wall-mounted format makes them particularly desirable for interior contexts where freestanding sculpture is not practical. Documented large plaque examples are seldom seen at auction and are more likely to come to market through private sale or specialist dealer channels.

Authentication for La Conversation follows the same principles as for all Mitoraj bronzes. The incised or stamped signature — MITORAJ or igor mitoraj — should be present and consistent with the period of production. The foundry mark for Fonderia Mariani in Pietrasanta should accompany the signature on works produced from the 1980s onward. For medal editions, the reverse of the work typically carries the edition number and foundry stamp. Any certificate of authenticity should identify the edition number, format, and casting year, and should correspond to Atelier Mitoraj documentation where applicable.

For collectors outside Italy, La Conversation and the Médaille format are among the less well-known items in Mitoraj's catalogue — which is itself a reason for interest. The work's comparative rarity on the secondary market, combined with its formal quality and its connection to the Renaissance medal tradition that is so central to Mitoraj's artistic heritage, gives it a particular appeal for collectors who want to engage with a less familiar dimension of his practice.