"Coeur brisé" gilded Bronze Sculpture by Torben Hardenberg

Torben Hardenberg, born in 1949, is a Danish designer, sculptor, jeweler and goldsmith. This statuette is entitled “The Broken Heart”. Indeed, one of the breasts of the majestic figure is deliberately and symbolically burst. It is a unique piece of its kind, its first cast in gilded bronze on this theme, mounted on a transparent Plexiglas base engraved by the artist's hand. Subsequently, he produced an identical figure in 5 numbered copies, but without the explosion of a broken heart. The goldsmith is particularly fascinated by the myths of ancient Greek civilization, which they consider to be an inexhaustible source of beauty and teaching
Through the medium of jewelry or “curiosity” objects, Torben Hardenberg likes to tell wonderful and often tragic stories (he was particularly inspired on several occasions by Andersen’s famous tales). His contemporary creations - combining the spirit of baroque with a rather minimalist formal and material treatment - often integrate organic elements, gothic elements and symbols of power and death to better recall the beauty of life, sometimes with a certain humor , the desire always to challenge our mind. With a lot of creativity in his way of evoking these themes of life and death, he uses visual metaphors, mythical allusions which allow him to address certain tragic news of humanity: the melting of the ice in Greenland, on the 11 September, the AIDS epidemic of the 80s…

The works of this extraordinary goldsmith, with a very dandy elegance, are represented in prestigious museums and collections around the world: Paris (Museum of Decorative Arts), London, New York (Cooper-Hewitt Museum), Los Angeles, Berlin, and in all the National Museums in Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, and Copenhagen of course. The Danish royal family - Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II, as well as her husband, Prince Consort of Denmark, Henrik - have been loyal collectors of Hardenberg's works for years, and have notably placed orders from him for large torchieres and chandeliers in bronze for the great hall of the official Palace.
Sculpture dated 1983 on the Plexiglas base.