Fontvieille: Blake and "The Atlantes"...

Having been established in the Principality for three years, Canadian sculptor Blake Ward has lent one of his works to decorate the lawns of the heliport.

"The Atlantes," three bronze figures that now adorn the Fontvieille rocks near the heliport, are the work of a young Canadian sculptor, Blake Ward, who has lived in the Principality for three years.

An unusual path has led this artist, who studied art in both Canada and Europe—first in Rome and then in Paris—where he also owns a gallery.

The young artist participated in numerous exhibitions such as the Bastille Salon, the Salon des Indépendants, and the Grand Palais in Paris.

His first artistic approach was directed toward abstraction. He created harmonious volumes that played with space. Yet his growing interest in the human being pushed him to return to figurative sculpture, through a journey back to its sources.

For he reveres Michelangelo, Bernini, Houdon, Carpeaux, Rodin, and, through their work, the magnificent lesson of figurative sculpture. This artistic tradition led Blake to leave Canada and travel through Europe in order to study the great Italian and French masters of the Renaissance and beyond.

In Monaco, whose climate, culture, and family environment make it the ideal place for artists, he carries all the arts in his heart.

In his Fontvieille studio, where he has lived for three years, Blake Ward no longer creates only figures of every beauty. The young artist, who considers himself somewhat "old-fashioned" because he believes that a sculptor's role is to realize a "group" from which a composition is born, has completed an imposing work: "Les Atlantes", three bronze men standing upright, their arms raised.

The work is symbolized by a skull and a blindfold, representing the secrets of time passing, hidden in the depths of living beings, beyond this inevitable struggle.

Two Atlantes seem determined to challenge the future, while the last one clearly marks his refusal, but perhaps his retreat, thereby emphasizing this dual quality of life and death.

It is in this region that Blake Ward recruits most of his models.

Thus, one of the Atlantes—is he a rugby player from Nice?

HM