Artistic approach
Stone wasn’t always been so hard. There was sandstone, then marble. But the initial yearning finally prevailed as granite has nothing decorative about it and implies unmatched physical engagement. It was the very notions of difficulty and differences that lay behind his choice. Denis Monfleur is not a sculptor who uses the kind of materials that create works all on their own. With him, beauty is hard won and comes from within. He’s one of those who take up a hammer to force the stone to express itself after close, no-hold-barred combat with the material. The sculptor works in the open air, sometimes in the quarries themselves, measuring himself against granite, diorite, lava and basalt.
Confronted with Denis Monfleur’s monumental sculptures, visitors draw themselves up, faces to the sky. If they invariably evoke times long past and such mythic lands as Egypt and Mesopotamia, if they conjure up images of standing stones or Easter Island’s moai, it’s because they call upon immemorial knowledge, our sense of the sacred, our ability to recognise the power of life, which imbues all beings, even those made of stone.
As well as the three basalt column sculptures exhibited during the 2023 Art Season, there are two monumental pieces, L’Oiseleur and L’Homme sauvage to discover in the Historic Grounds.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Denis Monfleur is a French sculptor. He started modelling when he was a teenager and got a job with the Paris press at the age of 18 before deciding to devote himself to sculpture fulltime. A self-taught artist, the young man gave up creating in clay in favour of wood and marble. The city of Fontenay-sous-Bois held his first exhibition in 1986 and three years later, the Catalan sculptor José Subirà-Puig (1925-2015) hired him as his assistant. Denis Monfleur also went on to collaborate with Dietrich-Mohr (1924-2016) and Marcel Van Thienen (1922-1998). A trio of well-known artists who left their mark on his development.
He was selected for the Fénéon Prize in 1995 but was injured while transporting his piece to the venue. His convalescence provided an opportunity for thought that immediately decided him to start using granite, a stone with particular resistance to bad weather and pollution. Since then, his work has essentially been characterised by direct carving on hard and often monumental blocks of stone.
Denis Monfleur is represented by the Claude Bernard gallery (Paris).
