Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner – 1953 – Private Collection

Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner – 1953 – second maquette – bronze rods and stainless steel wires.

Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner was awarded second prize in The Tate Gallery’s International Competition in London in 1953. The same year, this work was also exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The design is based on the general nature of imprisonment - physical or psychological - either by others or by our own psyche. Knowing only the latter, the artist suggested that if one can understand the sources of imprisonment and transcend them, one might survive.

The sculpture consists of two concentric "cones" between which it would be possible to walk, looking up into the sources of the structural cabling to contemplate and understand the origins of one’s confinement.