Igor Mitoraj was born, of Polish parents, in Oederan, Germany, in 1944. Having studied art at Cracow Art School, he enters the Cracow Academy of Art, where he receives a classically-based training under the painter Tadeusz Kantor. In Poland he exhibits his paintings at several joint expositions and holds his first one-man exhibition at the Gallery Krysztofory in Cracow. In 1968, he moves to Paris, where he continues to study at the National School of Art. At about this time, fascinated by the ancient culture of South America, Mitoraj leaves for Mexico, where he spends a year painting and travelling around the country. During this year he begins to sculpt. In 1974 he returns to Paris. During 1975 he proposes his work in two joint sculpture exhibitions and in 1976 he holds his first major one-man exhibition at the Gallery La Hune. After this first success, he realises that he is above all a sculptor and he decides to devote himself entirely to sculpture. He spends several months in New York, where he can breathe the atmosphere of the contemporary art scene and he travels regularly to Greece in order to study its artistic heritage. Until this time Mitoraj has worked only in terra-cotta or bronze, but, in 1979, on a visit to Carrara in Italy, he discovers that marble is an ideal medium for his work. In 1983 he set up a studio in Pietrasanta, near Carrara. Today, Igor Mitoraj divides his time between France and Italy.

Widely traveled, Mitoraj absorbed the influences of sculptural technique from Greece, New York, Central America, and Italy.

He has been commissioned for many monuments including the marble Omaggio a De Sabata for the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Sculpture Fountain for the Coca-Cola Foundation in the USA, and his work Tindaro may be seen in Paris at La Defense. Mitoraj's sculptures are now to be found in the most important public and private collections of contemporary art. In 1995 the monumental sculpture Thsuki-No-Hikari was acquired by the British Museum.