Igor Mitoraj — Cities of the World

Of all the places that ever hosted Mitoraj's work, Pompeii is the most resonant. In 2016 — two years after the artist's death — around thirty of his monumental sculptures were displayed throughout the UNESCO World Heritage archaeological site, among the ruins of the ancient Roman city. The exhibition, which Mitoraj had dreamed of for decades, placed his fragmented figures among the actual fragments of antiquity: bronzes among ruins, bandaged heads among volcanic ash.

The Italian culture minister announced that Daedalus would remain in Pompeii permanently, a gift to Italy. The Centauro stands in the Forum. These works have become part of Pompeii itself — as natural there as the columns they stand beside.

Testa Addormentata (Sleeping Head, 1983) is Mitoraj's most internationally reproduced work — a colossal bandaged female head lying on its side, installed permanently at Canary Wharf in London's Docklands financial district. Photographed millions of times, it has become an unofficial symbol of the artist in the English-speaking world.

Canary Wharf holds three Mitoraj works in total, making it one of the densest concentrations of his sculpture outside Italy. The British Museum also holds examples from his graphic and sculptural output. London was one of the first cities outside France and Italy to embrace his monumental work at institutional scale.

Kraków is where Mitoraj studied — at the Academy of Fine Arts, under the legendary Tadeusz Kantor. It is the city that made him an artist, and the city to which his work inevitably returned. Eros Bendato on the Main Market Square has become a landmark of the city, a favourite meeting point for locals and tourists alike. Kraków awarded the artist an honorary doctorate in 2007.

The National Museum in Kraków (Muzeum Narodowe) holds significant works from his early period. For collectors, Kraków remains the city most emotionally associated with the artist — and Polish buyers remain among the most serious collectors of his editions.

Warsaw holds a special significance: in 2009 Mitoraj created the Anielskie Drzwi (Angel Doors) — a set of monumental bronze doors for the Church of Our Lady of Grace in the Old Town, Świętojańska street. The doors caused controversy at their unveiling for the unconventional depiction of the Madonna, but became one of the city's most discussed contemporary artworks.

A five-metre bronze male torso stands at ul. Bobrowiecka 6 in the Mokotów district — cast with Mitoraj's first earned money, his homage to Tuscany. The third and final cast; the others stand in Paris and Milan. Warsaw is also where the private collector behind this website is based — and where several of the works shown in the gallery above were acquired.

Rome is where Mitoraj achieved his greatest institutional recognition. In 2006 he created the new bronze doors and a statue of John the Baptist for the Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli — a church built within the ruins of the ancient Baths of Diocletian, itself a site of fragments. The commission placed him in the direct lineage of Michelangelo, who had designed the church's conversion.

In 2004 the Mercati di Traiano (Trajan's Markets) hosted a major retrospective, placing his monumental heads among the ancient brick vaults of imperial Rome — the city that provided his primary visual vocabulary returned to claim his work as its own.

Paris was Mitoraj's adoptive city — where he studied, had his first major exhibition (1976 at Galerie La Hune, which launched his career), and where he died in October 2014. The French state gave him a studio in Montmartre's Bateau Lavoir district. Artcurial, the prestigious Paris gallery and auction house, published his most sought-after small bronze editions.

Tindaro Screpolato stands permanently at La Défense — a monumental cracked head, its surface split as if by geological time, gazing over Europe's largest office district. In 2004, the Jardin des Tuileries hosted a major outdoor retrospective alongside the Mercati di Traiano exhibition in Rome.

The UNESCO World Heritage city of Bamberg — with its mediaeval architecture and Baroque cathedral — is home to a large-format Centurione I, the monumental version of the small edition so avidly collected worldwide. The juxtaposition of Mitoraj's post-classical fragment against Bamberg's preserved ancient townscape is one of the most striking encounters between his work and European architectural heritage.

For collectors seeking context for the small-edition Centurione bronzes they may own or wish to sell, Bamberg provides the best sense of what the monumental Centurione looks like at full scale — the edition of the head runs from 19 cm table bronzes up to sculptures nearly a metre tall.