Art & patronage.

‘Veiled Face’ is among the most affecting works of Igor Mitoraj’s early period. A human face swathed in rhythmic bands of matter loses its sight, but not its presence. The veiling heightens the expression: attention settles on the sensuously modelled lips and on the tension hidden beneath the surface of a silent mask.

The silvery form brightens on its swells and darkens with patina in its folds, as though light itself were completing what the sculptor had left unfinished. It evokes at once an ancient relic and an object of almost sacred character. Here Mitoraj conducts a subtle dialogue with the classical tradition, subjecting the canon of beauty to the experience of the fragment, of transience and of absence.

The veil can be read in many ways: as a bandage, as a shroud, as the boundary between the visible world and a person’s inner experience. Set on a solid black base, the face remains suspended between flesh and symbol, suffering and calm, disclosure and mystery. It is a sculpture about the fragility of existence, but also about a beauty that reveals itself most fully in what is incomplete and left unsaid.

The work was made by the French house of Christofle as a New Year composition for 1977. The artist’s signature and the maker’s hallmarks on the reverse place it where sculpture, the silversmith’s art and the collector’s art object meet. In the collection it stands among other faces by Mitoraj and, like each of them, looks out from beneath its veil at those who have come to see it.