Art and Nature at Domaine de Chaumont

Three enigmatic figures, also imbued with spirituality, by Jaume Plensa are installed in the park and invite us to meditation.

On entering the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, the visitor is greeted by three hieratic bronze figures, installed in an arc, which impose a powerful but discreet presence. As always in the work of Jaume Plensa (born in 1955), their eyes are closed. ” Things happen on the inside. The head is a mirror where the viewer can reflect. For me, the work of art should be a place where you feel good. Like a film that we enjoy watching again. A poetic shelter where one regenerates, where one finds oneself, where one withdraws also sometimes, before returning to the world », confided Jaume Plensa in 2016, on the occasion of an exhibition organized in the Lelong gallery.


From Barcelona to Venice

It is in the secrecy of his workshop located in the suburbs of Barcelona that the Catalan sculptor, draftsman and poet gives birth to his enigmatic and silent figures. They can be busts or heads, solid or openwork volumes, in bronze, cast iron, resin, alabaster, Murano glass, basalt. Since his beginnings in the 1980s, Jaume Plensa has constantly alternated personal exhibitions and permanent or ephemeral installations in the public space, in Chicago (Crown Fountaina monumental work made up of two towers on which anonymous faces are projected, reflecting in a water mirror), in Rio (the immense head of a child erected on the beach, in front of the Sugar Loaf), in Venice (in the choir of the San Giorgio Maggiore basilica during the biennial in 2015), in Nice where his luminous characters from the work Conversation dominate Place Massena since 2007.

As soon as you enter the park, three large bronze sculptures by Jaume Plensa welcome the visitor. © Ines Baucells

An invitation to meditation

Invited to the 2022 Art Season, the artist has chosen to present three faces that are part of a series called Oak. ” They were first made of wood, before being cast in bronze, which makes it possible to fix a transitional moment in the life of the tree. I took as models three young girls, who, coming out of childhood, were also at a turning point in their lives. says Jaume Plensa. These characters with elongated, stretched, deformed features, abandoned to their dreams, are an invitation to meditation. “ My work has nothing to do with religion, but it is imbued with spirituality, continues the artist. Sculpture has this ability to reveal objects that remain dormant. The face is the only part of our body that we cannot see ourselves, except in a mirror. It is an offering for others, but it is also the mirror of the soul. »

Installation by Jaume Plensa at the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, 2022 © E. Sander, courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co. Paris

Installation by Jaume Plensa at the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, 2022 © E. Sander, courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co. Paris


Art Season 2022
Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire
Installation by Jaume Plensa
farm yard
Until October 30

Art and Nature at Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire: Jaume Plensa, the beauty of silence | Knowledge of the Arts