Les fantômes de Paul Landowski

To commemorate the counter-offensive that led the Allies to victory in 1918, the French government commissioned Paul Landowski, a French sculptor of Polish origin (1875-1961), to create an unusual monument, to be erected on the very spot where the fate of the Second Battle of the Marne was decided. One might have expected a work glorifying the action of the Allied armies, but it is not so. Heavily influenced by the pacifism of the 1930s, Landowski depicts "ghosts", seven dead soldiers, with blank stares and dressed in the various uniforms of the French army corps. In the middle of them appears the naked figure of a martyred hero, reminding us of the suffering of men thrown into war.

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