"Christ Pantocrator" (“Jesus Creator of All"), an icon by award-winning Romanian artist Marian Zidaru, was installed in the Archbishop Ireland Memorial Library last month.
"Christ Pantocrator" ("Jesus Creator of All") is the work of Romanian sculptor/painter Marian Zidaru. (Photo: Thomas Whisenand.)
The contemporary icon, a mixed-media work on solid cherry, weighs some 300 pounds and measures 6½ feet tall and more than 3 feet wide.
The piece was a gift to the university from Dr. Dana Johnson, director of neonatology and the International Adoption Medicine Program and Clinic at the University of Minnesota. Johnson became acquainted with the artist when he was working in Romania.
Zidaru, 53, lives with his wife, Victoria, in an Orthodox Christian artistic community in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains north of Bucharest. The couple have exhibited their works all over the world; many have religious, social and philosophical themes.
Learn more about the Zidarus' art in this article from the Journal of Religion and Society, published by the Rabbi Myer and Dorothy Kripke Center for the Study of Religion and Society at Creighton University.
