Igor Mitoraj: Angeli, Pisa

Even before I enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, wandering the streets of the city, I would often come to climb the hill on which Wawel Castle stands.

In that enchanting place overlooking Krakow, so many artists who had come from faraway Tuscany, such as Bartolomeo Berrecci, had left clear traces of the Renaissance genius that animated them.

To my adolescent eyes, those traces appeared as the ideal of "beauty" that came from ltaly, in observing them I discovered there the unmistakable signs of that country's extraordinary past, where Ancient Greece and Imperial Rome converged into one great mythological crater, in continuous and marvelous boiling.

Pisa and its "Field of Miracles" have long been dreamed places for me, in my feeling, in that "Field" art had reached its full fulfillment and its promise of eternity

Looking back, I can say that having made the opposite journey, from Poland to Tuscany, was like obeying a design whose contours eluded me, but whose meaning I sensed.

When I was offered to exhibit in Pisa, in the Piazza dei Miracoli, I felt again the teenager climbing the Wawel hill in search of beauty.

I cannot but feel happy and at the same time honored to see my works placed next to the masterpieces that for centuries, in this place, have testified to the faith of men and their extraordinary ability to represent it.

I sincerely thank all those whose efforts made this "miracle" possible.

Igor Mitoraj