©IOC Ester Franco Varon

This bronze work by the well-known Polish sculptor, Igor Mitoraj, born in 1944, is a male torso with no head draped in strips of material, displayed in the Park of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. Entitled “Cuirasse”, the work seems to have been cut off at the neck and upper arms of the person represented. And this is entirely deliberate… Indeed, Mitoraj draws much of his inspiration from Greco-Roman antiquity. He likes to represent gods, heroes, muses and centaurs. But he deliberately represents these figures in an incomplete and fragmented state. The reason for this is quite simple: Mitoraj wants to show the fragility of human existence. And the tears, strips and scars on his works are the material evidence of this. As such, "Cuirasse" allows the observer to approach the canons of beauty of ancient art whilst emphasising the precariousness of our lives.