Sphère en cascatelle

This fountain-sculpture is a hollow sphere composed of around twenty bowls. The water flows between them in a series of ‘cascatella’ or little waterfalls. Guy Lartigue saw water as the medium that brought his sculptures to life. He defined himself as a sculptor in love with the “song of water”. The material form supporting the flow of water creates an optical illusion of enveloping liquid film, cascading jets or fine transparent rain.

Born on 6 April 1927 in Paris, Guy Lartigue was the son of Maurice Lartigue, also known as Zissou, the elder brother of the photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue. He was a pupil of Jean Souverbie, Emmanuel Auricoste, and Ossip Zadkine. After studying sculpture at the Académies de Montparnasse in Paris, Guy Lartigue produced a number of monumental pieces in France, working with metal, copper, stainless steel, or granite. Lartigue used sheet metal, which he folded and bent into the desired shape. His sculptures often refer to the human body. He also created numerous decorative pieces, fountains and bas-reliefs, which he incorporated into architecture.
He defined himself as a statuary sculptor in love with the “song of water”. In the hundred or so sculpture-fountains he produced, water is treated like any other material. In the 1960s, he was commissioned to make a sculpture-fountain for the residence of the King of Spain in Marseille. The meeting with sculpture and water proved a pivotal moment, and he continued to express his art through them constantly. He created numerous sculptural artworks, many of them monumental pieces, devoting his life to art and water.
From Paris to Monte-Carlo, he designed sculpture-fountains for squares, gardens, and the great ensembles of the 1970s. He died in 2021.