Horned Heart
December 13th, 2023, will mark the 130th anniversary of Stanisław Szukalski’s (1893-12-13 – 1987-05-19) birth. A brilliant and controversial artist, Szukalski spent most of his life in Poland and in the USA. Apart from purely artistic work, he also developed and promoted his own ideas about the origin of languages and human civilization which are just too wild to even summarize here (see the Wikipedia article linked above). These, together with his ill temper and grandiosity, added to the controversy surrounding this unique personality. Best known as a sculptor, he also drew and painted as well as produced huge volumes of essays on his theories. Starting his career as a child prodigy, Szukalski went through a period of fame, but lived the end of his life in poverty and neglect.
His artistic legacy influenced many creators. In the United States, Szukalski was part of the Chicago Renaissance movement. In Poland, the artistic group of his followers was called Szczep Rogate Serce (The Horned Heart Tribe), and so the symbol of the horned heart is often associated with his whole artistic work.
This model went through several iterations, each using a completely different design technique. In the end, I settled on box-pleating, which composed well with the heart, and allowed me to make long horns easily. To more exactly match the horned heart symbol as used by Szukalski’s followers, the horns would need to be longer still, and curved differently, but I found the version here to be close enough to convey the meaning, and at the same time more practical since it could be folded from a 16×16 grid.
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