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LE CAMPOSANTO DE
MENTANA |
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The abstract work of Jacques Zwobada, embarked on at a period when the artist's life was illuminated by the companionship of Antonia, was to attain its zenith in the sculptures and drawings which emerged from the painful solitude of later life. |
| Once completed, the Camposanto de Mentana will host virtually all of the sculptures produced by Jacques after Antonia's death according to the chronological order and purpose of their creation. That of an Orphic quest for a lost wife, after passing through a gateway leading to a central path evoking cathedrals and overhanging supernatural creatures which conjur up the many hells of mythology. | |
| The visitor enters a nave of Cypress trees aligned like so
many pillars with nature serving as the chancel.
But this is more than an imaginary museum capturing the quintessential nature of these last works, since there are two perspectives which perpetuate the plane. |
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| The first spectacular visa carries us to the beyond and thus the Orphic quest. Beginning by the impossible embrace of the "Chevauchée Nocturne", this quest advances, sculpture by sculpture, via the incandescent illumination of the "Grande Verticale" towards the serenity of "Couple" " locked in ultimate embrace. Providing a link between nave and transept, this final sculpture, which closes the first perspective, leads us into a second almost intimist one, that of its terrestrial existence. | |
| Surrounded by busts of his friends and Antonia, eternal life-giving lares, he chose this peaceful idyll, which he wanted to open out onto the surrounding hills, as his final resting space. | |
| Suspended between the two chapels which complete the monument, Jacques composed his last sonate in the form of a mosaic stretching a full eight metres. | |
| Here, we witness the fusion of his three sources of
inspiration as he himself defined them: the supremancy of human
sentiment, music and nature.
Jean Letourneur |
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