Restoration of a historical work of art on the Pierre and Marie Curie campus

The Pierre et Marie Curie campus has a close historical link with the 1% artistic fund, created in May 1951 so that part of the budgets allocated to the construction of public buildings could be devoted to "decorative work" through commissions to contemporary artists. The construction of a new Faculty of Sciences, launched in the early 1950s on the site of the Halle aux vins, thus served as a laboratory for the 1%, leading to the creation of numerous works of art that can still be seen on the campus today.

The first works of the 1% were murals commissioned to decorate the "bars" built in 1958 by the architect Urbain Cassan. They were created by artists who were well versed in the decorative arts and had already received numerous public commissions.¹ This was the case for the painter Jacques Despierre (1912-1995), one of the representatives of the École de Paris, who was a professor and then head of the mural workshop at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, where he succeeded Marcel Gromaire and taught drawing, frescoes and mosaics. In the 1950s and 1960s, he made decorative panels for the liners of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique and Messageries Maritimes, including the France (1961). The same year, he was entrusted with the realization of a work to decorate the entrance hall of the building F: it will be Rhythms of water, a canvas pasted on wooden panels of more than 5 meters by 3 which, like other murals ordered for the Cassan bars to painters André Planson and Jacques Soubervie, deal with themes referring to the scientific world ².

It is this painting, which will remain in Building F on the Pierre and Marie Curie campus until 2022, that is currently being restored. The operation was led by the Scientific Collections and Heritage Unit of the Sorbonne University Library, which, since its creation in 2017, has been involved in the mapping, conservation and promotion of the university's collections.

Removed and transported by specialists in the conservation and restoration of painted works in the workshops of Aïnu, the work was consolidated, the pictorial layer was cleaned and the overpainting from a previous restoration in 1975 was removed. These interventions have allowed the rediscovery of the original colors, lively and much brighter.

A fireproof resin will be applied to the reverse and sides of the work after the restoration in order to reconcile the protection of the wooden panels and the regulatory constraints. It should be reinstalled in April 2023 in the lobby of the Esclangon building, where it will regain its "decorative" vocation and shed light on the sometimes little-known artistic history of the Pierre and Marie Curie campus.

¹  Christian Hottin, « L’Architecture universitaire des Trente glorieuses : des temples du savoir à l’université de masse », Universités et grandes écoles à Paris : les palais de la science, Paris, 1999, 222 p., p. 187-191.
²  Annette Roche, « Le 1 %, de la faculté des sciences de Paris à l’Université Pierre et Marie Curie : inventaire, restauration, valorisation d’un patrimoine artistique méconnu », In Situ, 17, 2011.