Anna Chromy

Biography

Anna Chromy’s best-known work is an empty cloak with no figure inside it. She gave it several names: the Cloak of Conscience, the Piétà, the Commendatore. Copies and versions stand in Salzburg Cathedral and in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, and one stood in front of the Estates Theatre in Prague. In 2007–2010 she made it as a monolith of white marble more than four metres high: the block weighed 200 tonnes, the finished sculpture about 50. The work was done in Carrara, at the Cave Michelangelo studio.

She was born on 18 July 1940 in Český Krumlov, into a Czech-German family: her mother was Marie, née Chromy, and her father was a brewer. She later took her maternal grandmother’s surname as her artistic name.

By the end of the Second World War the family had left Czechoslovakia for Austria. Chromy’s childhood was spent in Linz, Salzburg and Vienna; in Salzburg and Vienna the musical culture made a strong impression on her, and music remained one of the main sources of her subjects. As a young woman she studied ballet. The family had no money for art school. The chance to study came after her marriage and move to Paris: accounts differ on the year of the marriage and on the institution, some naming the École des Beaux-Arts, others the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In Paris she became absorbed in Surrealism and met Salvador Dalí, whom she regarded as her teacher. A charcoal drawing, “Homage to Dalí and Gala”, and Dalí’s image in the painting “The Boat of Cadaqués” (1981) belong to this influence. Her painting also shows references to Max Ernst and René Magritte and to the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, and its soft colours recall Turner.

From 1980 she lived in Monaco.

In 1985 Chromy made three sketches, “Faces of Peace”, for the United Nations Year of Peace in New York. Her painting “Man, Earth, Universe” became the official painting of the 1992 World’s Fair, EXPO 92, in Seville.

In 1992 she was in a serious accident and for several years could not paint (accounts give anything from six to eight years). She then turned to sculpture in bronze and marble. She had a studio and bronze foundries in Pietrasanta, in Tuscany; she carved marble at Massimo Galleni’s studio, and in Carrara she worked at the Studio Michelangelo of Franco Barattini. She made the characters of “Don Giovanni” in life-size bronze: the exhibition “Don Giovanni and the Sound of Bronze” was held in Prague in 2000. In 2002 her sculpture “The Heart of the World” was presented to Pope John Paul II in St Peter’s Square. Her other works include “Europe”, “Olympic Spirit”, “Ulysses” and “Sisyphus”, on mythological subjects.

There were also major exhibitions: “Il Canto di Orfeo” (2004, Pietrasanta), “Europe” (2005, Place Vendôme in Paris), “Mythos Revisited” (2007, National Archaeological Museum, Athens), “Dream of the East” (2009, Beijing), “Myths of the Mediterranean” (2011, Saint-Tropez) and “Spiritus Mundi” (2012, Foshan).

Her awards include the Masaryk Prize for European Reconciliation (2002), the Franz Kafka Medal (2003) and the World Salvador Dalí Prize (2003). In 2008 she received the Premio Michelangelo, awarded since 1997, for the Cloak of Conscience in Carrara; she was the first woman among its winners. That same year she presented a model of the cloak to Pope Benedict XVI to mark the founding of the Conscience Institute. The institute presents the Chromy Award each year; the first ceremony took place in 2013. Her Olivier d’Or prize was presented in 2009 by Albert II, Prince of Monaco, to Elie Wiesel, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2012 “Olympic Spirit” was placed in the Olympic Village in London: the sculpture was a gift from Lord Colin Moynihan, chairman of the British Olympic Association. In June of that year the director of the sculpture academy in Beijing named Chromy an honorary fellow of the academy. She painted the series “Chromology” in 2012.

She had been donating sculptures to Prague since 2002. Decisions to install them were made without a competition, and many artists and critics objected: Milan Knížák led a demonstration against the sculptures in 2003. At the same time, in a 2017 poll the Cloak of Conscience came first among twenty modern sculptures in the city. In 2025 the city removed the cloak from in front of the Estates Theatre.

Anna Chromy died on 18 September 2021 in Monaco and was buried in Salzburg, in St Peter’s Cemetery.