Riding into exile
Scorned by many, statue honoring freedom fighters is hauled from Common
It has been called everything from a timeless reminder of the ''human toll of fighting for what one believes in" to merely depressing. Now, it is gone.
''Partisans," the controversial sculpture of five emaciated, bedraggled horsemen that has been at the foot of Boston Common for nearly a quarter-century, has been exiled to storage in South Boston, where it awaits shipment to its owner in San Francisco.
Inspired by the Poles who fought the Nazis and then the communists, ''Partisans" was Polish sculptor Andrew Pitynski's monument to freedom fighters around the world.
But when it came to Boston in 1983, several years after its creation in 1979, it was not always appreciated. The sculpture's international theme, depicted in its tormented horses and gaunt figures, in a park largely devoted to American historical figures, irked some of Boston's art elite.
The sculpture was originally loaned to Boston for six months. But its owner, a San Francisco-based foundation, never reclaimed it, according to Sarah Hutt, director of the Boston Art Commission.
That was an annoyance to parks and police officials, as well as the Beacon Hill community.
So the city hired a fine arts moving company to dig up the 8,000-pound sculpture and haul it to a storage facility.
''It's like if you leave your car in front of my house," Hutt said. ''I can't take it out and wash it. You've got to come and move it."
Members of the Friends of the Public Garden, which has been asking the city to remove the sculpture for years, voiced strong approval.
''Well, cheers," said Eugenie Beal, a longtime board member and a Beacon Hill resident.
Calling the sculpture's removal during last week's thaw a ''cause for celebration," Beal said the sculpture had never fit with the rest of the public art on the Common and in the Public Garden, where can be found a figure of George Washington and the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial to the famous 54th Regiment of the Civil War.
''The Boston Common is the first park in the United States, and the monuments on it should have to do with America and its history," she said. '' 'Partisans' just isn't appropriate.
''You don't have to get into an assessment of its artistic value," she added.
But Pitynski, a 58-year-old Polish immigrant who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., and who works in New Jersey, voiced outrage that his monument to freedom fighters had been ''put to the jail."
''It was my statement from now and for the new generations to come, and they moved the statement out," he said, adding that no one had told him of its removal.
''I can see some people from the Boston administration maybe hate this statement and hate art," Pitynski said.
When the sculpture first arrived in Boston, it spent a few months on City Hall Plaza, but Mayor Kevin H. White reportedly ordered it moved to the Boston Common, near the corner of Beacon and Charles streets, where it stayed put.
The Boston Art Commission has been trying to get rid of it for much of its time on the Common, Hutt said. The Parks Department also got sick of working around it.
That area of the Common has also become a staging area for large events, such as road races and festivals, and police had to deal with people climbing on it during events. It has no solid base, so it had begun sinking, and parts of it could have injured people.
Hutt said the city has long made it clear to the owner, which she identified as the Sculpture Foundation of San Francisco, that ''Partisans" has overstayed its welcome. Hutt said she did not know why the foundation did not take the sculpture back.
In June, she said, the four members of the Boston Art Commission voted unanimously to have the work removed.
Hutt said she had made a few inquiries to find out whether other local institutions would be interested in adopting the sculpture. Prominent institutions such as the Massachusetts College of Art and the University of Massachusetts at Boston politely declined. Bridgewater State College, which Hutt said was assembling works for a sculpture park, was interested, but the Sculpture Foundation did not give its permission, so nothing happened.
So, she said, the city plans to send the sculpture to San Francisco in a few weeks, ''unless they tell me something else."
Jack Kowalski, a Dorchester activist who helped bring the sculpture to Boston, lamented its departure. ''It's not like the Polish-Americans have a lot of sculpture pieces or representation in art around the city, so what little we do have has been kind of removed, and it's not emotionally easy to understand," he said.
Pitynski said the sculpture had been designed to be low to the ground so that people, especially children, could interact with it.
He said he was touched to see children climbing among the horses' legs the last time he was in Boston; it was a sign, he said, that people connected with the work.
He said that many family members had died from the Nazi invasion and the postwar strife.
He said Boston was the ideal location because ''there the Americans started the first fight against the English oppression."
Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com. 