This work combines the memory of antiquity with contemporary treatment. Its proportions are ideal, but Ikaria has been deliberately decapitated and nailed to the ground by a hand that seems to prevent it from taking flight, despite its outstretched wings. Through his work, Igor Mitoraj never ceases to express human nature and its imperfection - the human body, its beauty and fragility. Often large-scale, like the six-metre-high bronze Ikaria, his sculptures catch the eye in public places now scattered across many cities in Europe, the United States and Japan.

Born in Germany in 1944 to a Polish mother and French father, Igor Mitoraj graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, where he was a pupil of Tadeusz Kantor. In the early 70s, fascinated by pre-Columbian art, he moved to Mexico, where he began sculpting. He returned to Europe in 1974 and exhibited in Paris in 1976 at Galerie La Hune. In 1979, he moved to Carrara in Tuscany, where he began to use marble as his main medium, while continuing to work in terracotta and bronze. In 1983, he set up his studio in Pietrasanta. Igor Mitoraj is considered one of Poland's most eminent contemporary artists. At the age of 70, Igor Mitoraj died of leukemia in 2014.