Igor Mitoraj in Poznań
Poznań holds three permanent Mitoraj sculptures — all inside Stary Browar (Old Brewery), one of Poland's most celebrated cultural and commercial destinations on ul. Półwiejska. The complex, conceived by collector and entrepreneur Grażyna Kulczyk on the "50/50" principle — half commerce, half culture — opened in 2003 with a Mitoraj sculpture as its centrepiece. Today, Thsuki-no-hikari in the entrance Atrium has become the city's most spontaneous meeting point: Poznań residents say "meet me under the Mitoraj" and everyone knows exactly where to go.
Stary Browar — Art at the Heart of Commerce
Stary Browar occupies a 19th-century brewery complex on ul. Półwiejska, built by the Hugger family from the Black Forest beginning in 1844. The brewery operated until 1980, then fell into ruin. In 1998, Grażyna Kulczyk — one of Poland's most significant private art collectors — purchased the site and proposed a radical idea: a centre where art and commerce coexist on equal terms. The "50/50" concept committed half the building's character to cultural programming: exhibitions, performances, and permanent artworks woven into the fabric of the space.
When the Atrium opened on 5 November 2003, Mitoraj's monumental face-mask was its immediate focal point. Kulczyk's collection, now managed by the Art Stations Foundation, includes works by major Polish and international artists — but it is the Mitoraj sculptures that have become the building's defining visual identity. The complex attracts nine million visitors annually and is consistently ranked among the best-designed shopping centres in the world.
Thsuki-no-hikari (Blask Księżyca / Moonlight) — 1991
Thsuki-no-hikari — Japanese for "Moonlight", in Polish Blask Księżyca — is a monumental bronze face-mask standing in the entrance Atrium of Stary Browar. Mitoraj gave the work a Japanese title in a period when he was exhibiting extensively in Japan and engaging deeply with Japanese aesthetic sensibilities, particularly the concept of beauty emerging from incompleteness — closely related to the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic that he admired.
The face is immediately recognisable as Mitoraj's: a fragment of a youthful, idealised head — half-antique, half the sculptor's own features — with the characteristic cracks and deliberate damage that run throughout his work. The lips, always shaped to Mitoraj's own mouth, are just visible. The work is mounted vertically in the Atrium space, rising to a considerable height, and catches the natural light that floods in through the building's glass ceiling.
The sculpture has become so central to Poznań's social geography that "under the Mitoraj" is a universal meeting instruction among the city's residents — as natural as "under the clock" or "at the fountain" in other cities. The Rzechpospolita newspaper described it as "a gigantic face-mask representing a half-antique, half-personal hero." It is the best-known Mitoraj work in Poznań and the most visited by those seeking his work outside Warsaw and Kraków.
Tors nad jeziorem (Torso by the Lake)
Tors nad jeziorem — Torso by the Lake — is the second Mitoraj work in the Stary Browar Atrium, displayed alongside Thsuki-no-hikari. A bronze male torso, characteristic in its fragmentary treatment, the work shares the same vocabulary of classical beauty subjected to deliberate damage and incompletion that defines all Mitoraj's torso series. The title suggests a reflective, contemplative relationship between the sculpture and its surrounding space — the torso seen as if by water, in uncertain light.
The Atrium setting — with its high glass ceiling, warm brick walls from the original brewery, and the flow of visitors — gives both Atrium sculptures a particular vitality. They are not protected in museum silence but embedded in daily life, seen by millions of people going about ordinary business. This was precisely the context Mitoraj preferred for his public work: art encountered without preparation, without the frame of a gallery visit, simply present in the world.
Eros Alato (Eros Skrzydlaty / Winged Eros) — 1984
Eros Alato — Winged Eros, in Polish Eros Skrzydlaty — is one of Mitoraj's earliest treatments of the Eros theme, predating the famous Eros Bendato (Bound Eros) of 1999 by fifteen years. Where the later Eros is horizontal, lying on his side, bound and blindfolded, the 1984 Winged Eros is in a different compositional register — the wings of Eros, the ancient Greek god of desire, present but non-functional, the body fragmented and damaged in Mitoraj's characteristic manner.
The presence of an early Eros Alato in the Kulczyk collection is historically significant: it shows a major collector's investment in Mitoraj's work from an early period, before his international breakthrough exhibitions of the mid-1980s. The 1984 dating places this work in the year of Mitoraj's Castel Sant'Angelo exhibition in Rome — the show that launched his international career. A Winged Eros from that period is a document of the moment when his vocabulary was consolidating.
Academic scholarship on Mitoraj's reception in Poland specifically notes the Poznań Eros Alato as a significant early work in a Polish collection, contrasting its private/cultural-commercial setting with the public square placement of the Kraków Eros Bendato. The debate about where Mitoraj's work "belongs" — in civic space or inside cultural institutions — was particularly acute in Poland in the early 2000s, and the Poznań sculptures were central to that conversation.
Poznań's Relationship with Mitoraj
Poznań's encounter with Mitoraj has been primarily through the Kulczyk collection rather than civic patronage — a significant distinction. In Kraków, the city itself debated and ultimately accepted Eros Bendato as a civic gift; the ownership and meaning of the work were publicly contested. In Poznań, the Mitoraj sculptures belong to a private collection in a privately-owned cultural-commercial complex. They are accessible to millions, but their context is commercial culture rather than civic space.
This distinction is not purely academic. It reflects broader patterns in how Polish cities have related to Mitoraj's work: Warsaw through institutional commissions (the Jesuit church doors, the Olympic Centre); Kraków through civic negotiation and controversy; Poznań through the vision of an exceptional private collector. The Kulczyk collection at Stary Browar is one of the most significant private art collections in Poland, and the Mitoraj works are among its most visible and beloved pieces.
For collectors in the Poznań region, this context matters. The city has a strong tradition of private collecting and a sophisticated art market. If you own a Mitoraj work in the Poznań area — acquired through any channel, in any format — I am an active buyer and would welcome contact.
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