A statue bearing the effigy of the Little Prince made by the Norman sculptor Jean-Marc de Pas will soon take place on 5th Avenue in New York as the work of Saint-Exupéry celebrates its 80th anniversary. This philosophical tale was born from the pen of the writer in 1943 when he was in exile in the United States.
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Modeling, kneading the clay, sculpting it meticulously. Today, in his workshop located in the heart of the family castle in Bois-Guilbert, near Rouen, it is the artist Jean-Marc de Pas who brings back to life under his hands this child who sees only with the heart. His facial features are minimalist. This slender character, a scarf around his neck, his head raised towards the stars was created by the aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: he is the Little Prince.
The Norman artist endeavored to recreate the same emotions as when discovering Saint-Exupéry’s book with humanist values and universal dimension “It is the invitation to see the gaze that rises, not the gaze but the heart that rises, something transcendent“, explains Jean-Marc de Pas who has already made a first order for the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Foundation: the bust of the pilot in his plane installed since July 13 at the Air and Space Museum in Le Bourget.
The Little Prince will be seated along New York’s Fifth Avenue
In a few weeks, the model of the Little Prince will be cast in bronze and will cross the Atlantic to reach its city of birth. It will take place on 5th Avenue in New York in September 2023. It was there that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, while he was in exile after having left occupied France for good, wrote in 1942 the famous fable where a naive little prince falls in love with a delicately beautiful rose.
This philosophical tale first published in English in the United States in 1943 has been passed down and shared from generation to generation for 80 years. It has been translated into 535 languages. The French edition came out in 1946, just after the Liberation. The author will never see her. On an air mission in the Mediterranean, his plane disappears from radar, bringing him back to his star, like his character.
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