Monument aux morts de la guerre 1914-1918
MonumentHidden Treasure
In Terrasson-Lavilledieu, a deeply moving war memorial depicts not glorious heroes, but a broken family: an amputee father, a peasant mother, and a little girl carrying the hope of a world to be rebuilt.
History
In the heart of Terrasson-Lavilledieu, in the Dordogne, a monument to the dead stands out radically from the triumphal steles that line the squares of France. Here, there are no helmeted poilu brandishing a flag: the sculptor has chosen to look the war in the face, in what it leaves behind - families sorely tried, bodies damaged, women who have held the land alone for years. Listed as a Historic Monument in 2014, this building is one of the most moving sculptural testimonies to the Great War in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. The sculpted group depicts a strikingly intimate scene: a father, his leg torn off by the conflict, tenderly embraces his young daughter. Behind them, the mother leans on the ploughshare - the tool of survival, of the silent resistance of all those women who ploughed, sowed and harvested while their men died in the mud of the trenches. The woman's posture is ambiguous and terribly accurate: she could just as easily put down the tool as take up the handle, because the husband's disability suggests that the work will continue. What strikes the attentive observer is the narrative density contained in this single group of three characters. The sheaves of wheat and the presence of the child breathe a note of hope into this picture of mourning and sacrifice, reminding us that life, despite everything, takes its rightful place again. Far from the pompous monumentalism of some memorials, this work appeals to the sensibilities of everyone with a remarkable economy of means. Today, the monument enjoys a central location in the commune, the result of a complex municipal history: it is in fact the result of the merger, in the 1950s, of two distinct memorials that had been separated by local political divisions. This late reunification adds another layer of meaning to a work that already speaks of reconciliation and shared memory. For visitors to Terrasson-Lavilledieu - including the medieval town and the Jardins de l'Imaginaire - this monument is an essential stopover, a moment of contemplation that resonates long after you've left the site.
Architecture
Le monument aux morts de Terrasson-Lavilledieu belongs to the tradition of commemorative sculpture in the round, a form favoured by French communes wishing to go beyond the simple engraved stele in order to offer their dead a living and human representation. The work comprises a figurative sculptural group set upon a stone plinth, arranged in a balanced pyramidal composition that guides the eye from the base — the plough and the tilled earth — up towards the symbolic apex formed by the faces of the figures. The three figures — the wounded father, the peasant mother, and the young girl — are rendered in a sober realist style, characteristic of French sculpture from the inter-war period. The peasant clothing, the morphology of the bodies, and the naturalness of the poses betray a careful observation of the rural world of the Périgord. The father's amputated leg, depicted without morbid ostentation, and the mother leaning upon the agricultural tool constitute the two dramatic focal points of the composition, united by the calming presence of the child and the sheaves of wheat. The materials used — in all likelihood local limestone or a bronze alloy for the principal sculptural elements, in keeping with the practices of the period — lend the ensemble a solidity and permanence befitting the commemorative purpose of the work. The plinth, sober and monumental, bears the inscribed names of the fallen soldiers, bringing together for the first time, during the regrouping of the 1950s, the names of inhabitants from both the upper and lower town in a single act of remembrance.
Related Figures
Les soldats de Terrasson-Lavilledieu morts pour la France (1914-1918), dont les noms sont gravés sur le monumentLes femmes paysannes du Périgord, incarnées par la figure de la mère au soc de charrueLes élus municipaux de la ville haute et de la ville basse, artisans de la réunification mémorielle dans les années 1950Le sculpteur anonyme du groupe figuratif, héritier du courant réaliste-pacifiste de la sculpture commémorative françaiseLes anciens combattants et mutilés de guerre de Terrasson, modèles vivants de la figure du père amputé
