http://www.simontoparovsky.com
Toparovsky lives and maintains studios in Los Angeles and near Lake
Como in northern Italy. Working in bronze and cast iron, he has
created panels, figures and objects from nature as elements for installations
that include water and landscapes. With this work he has designed private
gardens as well as large scale public art projects.
Simon’s art has been exhibited internationally and purchased for
important collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, in New York; the Getty Center, and Los Angeles County
Museum of Art.
Toparovsky is currently working on garden installations in Italy and
California and has recently finished a commission for a private altar
crucifix. He will have a public exhibition sponsored by the City
and Province of Milan (Italy) in April 2003.
The Commission
In 1998, Toparovsky was among several hundred international artists
invited to submit portfolios to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to be
considered to create works of art for the new Cathedral. Although
he had never been commissioned to create religious art, his work has
been based on representing the complexities of the human condition.
He was asked to consider a design for the main altar crucifix in the
winter of 2000. The Cardinal commissioned the work in the Spring of
that year.
The original work was created in wax, clay and fabrics, over a period
of two years, in the artist’s Los Angeles studio. The casting
was done at the American Fine Arts Foundry in Burbank. The bronze corpus
of the "Red Crucifix" is slightly larger than life-size and
weighs 410 pounds.
Toparovsky’s initial concept was to create a benign, transcendent
Jesus, floating and beyond suffering. Father Vosko (the Cathedral’s
art consultant) suggested that he read the book “A Doctor on Calvary”,
Dr. Pierre Barbet, (1953) which clinically describes the brutal physicality
of crucifixion and the punishments that preceded it. This difficult
reading changed Toparovsky’s mind. Ultimately, he created
a piece that engenders the pain and suffering of the human Jesus, and
also, represents the idea of Jesus-- the radiant spirit. In the finished
work, the rich surfaces of the cast bronze show flayed and abraded skin
and the figure is misshapen from swelling and broken limbs. The
face transcends pain and the uplifted hands, although in spasm, appear
to bestow a blessing.
The cast bronze corpus is mounted on a 14 foot tall wooden cross of
American Sycamore. Sycamore was chosen because, by tradition, it is
considered to be the wood used to make the original cross for Jesus.
The feet of the Corpus are just 39” off the floor. The installation
was designed to allow the veneration of Christ’s legs and feet.
Learn more about
the CRUCIFIX.
