Object Description
This striking profile, classically heroic, yet distinctly French, courageous and reserved, belongs to the famed early French aviator Jean Mermoz. A French Air Force and commercial pilot, friend and icon to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Mermoz was known for skilled and daring flights across Europe, Africa and South America before his disappearance during a flight across the South Atlantic in 1936. A symbol of pioneering French character, Mermoz was the perfect subject for this dramatic bronze bust by master sculptor Lucien Gibert, a modern ideal with a powerful presence and and stirring, poised interiority that exhibits Gibert’s key influences in Aristide Maillol and Charles Despiau.