STA, 9 June 2022 - A large bronze fountain has disappeared from the Maribor city park during construction works. The Maribor police department has told the STA police are investigating a grand theft.
The 1980 fountain Fitoliti (Phytoliths), the work of Maribor-based sculptor Vojko Štuhec, is located in the part of the park where renovation works have been under way for a year.
It is just over a metre and a half tall and made out of bronze and granodiorite, a rock similar to granite.
The only fountain in the Maribor park, it represents phytoliths, rigid, microscopic structures made of silica that are found in some plant tissues and persisting after the decay of the plant, which according to the Maribor Art Gallery symbolically unite the transience of plants and the permanence of rocks.
The Maribor police said on Facebook yesterday that someone had put the sculpture on a truck at night and taken off with it.
"This is an inadmissible criminal act and a sign of disrespect to the cultural heritage of Maribor," the municipality said.
The investigation is ongoing.
