Gregory Star, Dante with flower
Patinated bronze
Signed.
Dimensions: 72 x 35 x 30 cm
Edition 2/6
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The author writes about his work as follows:
The portrait depicts Dante looking at an apple blossom with melancholy and bitterness. A flower picked that will not bear fruit. Dante's love for the prematurely deceased Beatrice was similarly fruitless. His love did not live to see fulfillment. Instead, it fertilized his imagination and intensified his creative powers. His personal suffering became the source of inspiration for a work that changed the history of our culture. The portrait is also a depiction of a scene from the "Divine Comedy" - wandering through the seventh circle of hell, the Poet encounters souls enchanted with living trees and, at Vergil's urging, breaks a branch from one of them:
"Ot break the crooked branch,
And you will know your mistake." Iam soon impatient
He stretched out his hand, and the twig he bit.
"Why are you breaking me?" the trunk suddenly shouted;
With blood all blackened and spoke again with a shout:
"Why are you tugging at me with a heart so wild?
We were humans, we are trees,
You could have had more pity on us,
Though we were vermin souls."
Like one end of a gore lit,
And with the other it hisses, the green head wings.
Yawning the air, which heats up in it,
So blood and words went from the trunk of that tree.
And I dropped the branch under my feet,
Standing like a man shaken with trepidation."
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Divine Comedy, transl. Julian Korska, song XII, pp. 56-57
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Grzegorz Gwiazda - born in 1984, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and as a scholarship student at the Accademia di Belle Arte di Brera in Milan. In 2009, he graduated with honors from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, defending his master's thesis in Prof. Adam Myjak's sculpture studio. Since 2009, he has been teaching at the Graphics and Sculpture Studio of IEA APS in Warsaw. In 2014, he earned his doctorate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and in 2019 he received his postdoctoral degree. Since 2015, he has been teaching at the Barcelona Academy of Art.
He was the recipient of a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in 2008/2009, and also received the ENTRY Initiative scholarship. He is a two-time winner in the international figurative art competition organized by the Fundació de les Arts i els Artistes in Spain (awarded sculptures Behold the Man in 2010 and Bicycle in 2015). In 2018, he received an award from the art magazine Arteon.
Star's realizations can be found in Poland, Spain and China. His works are in many collections, including the permanent collection of the Museu Europeu d'Art Modern in Barcelona.
