Mitoraj — Stella

Stella belongs to the intimate register of Mitoraj's work — not a monumental civic installation but a collector bronze meant to be encountered at close range. The work presents a fragment of a lower face — lips, chin, neck — merging into an upper torso that is cut at the sides as if sectioned from a larger whole. The surface carries the warm reddish-brown patina characteristic of Mitoraj's foundry work at Pietrasanta. The signature reads clearly on the lower left edge of the base.

Stella

Bronze · Warm reddish-brown patina · Collector edition · Signed Mitoraj

Stella — Latin and Italian for "star" — is a title Mitoraj used for works in which a fragment of a human figure carries an implicit luminosity or intensity. The lower face here, with its closed lips and clean neck, is rendered with the same care as the monumental heads that made his reputation: a self-contained presence, complete despite — or because of — its incompleteness.

The deliberate cropping at the sides and the stepped base plate are characteristic of Mitoraj bronzes in this format. They locate the fragment explicitly in time — as something that survived rather than something always this way. The patina is worked to suggest age without mimicking it artificially.

Acquiring a Stella

Mitoraj bronzes in this intimate register — Stella, Kea, Tête Secrète, Portrait d'Homme — appear regularly in European auction sales, particularly in France, Italy and Germany. Editions vary; some appear as unique casts, others in small numbered series. If you have a Stella to sell, I buy directly, without intermediary or commission, with payment within days.

See also: Tête Secrète · Kea · Portrait d'Homme · All bronzes