Louis Derbré

Louis Derbré was born on 16 November 1925 in Montenay, near Ernée, in the Mayenne, to a farming family. He worked the family land until the age of nineteen, then moved to Paris after the war, where he was a labourer in an art publishing house. Among students of the Beaux-Arts, he discovered his vocation as a sculptor around 1948. In 1951, his portrait of Louis Werschürr earned him the Prix Fénéon, presented by the poet Louis Aragon. He then trained in Émile Gilioli's studio (1956-1959), where he engaged with abstraction without abandoning the figure. The exhibition "Rodin, Maillol, Derbré" (1962) established him among the leading sculptors. Devoted to the human figure, his work gained international recognition: "La Terre", a nine-metre bronze, was erected in Tokyo in 1972; "La Minute de Silence", a statue of President Georges Pompidou, was installed in Paris in 1984; the "Memorial for Peace" was unveiled near Hiroshima in 1997. In 1991 he founded the Espace culturel Louis Derbré in Ernée, with its foundry and sculpture garden. A Knight of the Legion of Honour (1998), he worked until his death on 3 August 2011, in the Mayenne. The Louis Derbré open-air museum, at the Château de Conon, was born of the passion of collectors Catherine and François-Noël Desfemmes, who met the artist in 1996 at his Mayenne studio. Opened to the public on 18 May 2024, it brings together around one hundred and fifty sculptures in a five-hectare park.