Pierre Sabatier : A monumental artist

by Jacinthe Gigou

Pierre Sabatier’s monumental installations evoke lunar or Martian landscapes, even stars in formation, the Big Bang itself. Hammered, chiseled, polished, or burned, metal, his material of choice, becomes a vast field of experimentation, a laboratory. Treated with fire or acid, brass, tin, and copper oxidize, revealing forms that are at once organic, biomorphic, and abstract.
“I remember the excitement in my father’s workshop,” recalls Damien Sabatier, the artist’s son. “The Vulcan-like atmosphere, the sparks, the smoke, the ten people working with him… And the ballet of trucks and containers transporting his pieces to the ends of the earth, Canada, Saudi Arabia.” Sabatier’s work reflects a fascination with cosmogony, the creation of the world, both in its tangible transformation of matter and its spiritual dimension. This intangible quality is evident in the titles of his works: The Burning Bush, The Tree of Light, and The Celestial Pillars. The latter, a 1969 installation at the Royale Belge (now Mix) in Brussels, features brass partitions etched with acid, forming a screen for the auditorium of the former insurance company. The celestial work also evokes the forest, echoing the nearby Soignes Forest. Viewing Sabatier’s pieces, one is reminded of contemporaries like Alberto Burri, François Stahly, and Victor Vasarely.

Born in 1925 in the Auvergne countryside near Moulins, Sabatier was the son of an engineer father passionate about mechanics and an artist mother deeply immersed in culture. From an early age, he developed a love for materials and creation, inspired by the volcanic landscapes around him. After earning his baccalaureate, he moved to Paris in the late 1940s to study at the École des Arts Décoratifs and the Beaux-Arts. There, he discovered Monet’s Water Lilies, read Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, and Pascal’s Pensées, which nourished his spirituality. Fascinated since childhood by Egypt and Assyrian temples, Sabatier’s attraction to monumentality was unwavering. He admired Le Corbusier, stating in 1973 : “Emerging from my Impressionist phase, which, in Moulins, seemed the height of Modernism, I discovered the monumental art of Le Corbusier.”
Initially working in ceramics, Sabatier grew frustrated with the constraints of tile joints, which he saw as metaphors for the limits of his practice. In the 1960s, he turned to metal, a liberating medium. At a time when humanity was conquering the Moon, space became an endless source of inspiration for many artists. Resonating with American Action Painting, Sabatier developed his own technique : acid frescoes.

In 1951, France adopted a policy integrating art into architecture by allocating 1% of the construction budget for public buildings to commission artworks. This “1% for Art” law was initially implemented within the National Education system before expanding to other ministries. As a result, every new school was funded to create a work of art. Over the past 60 years, more than 12,300 artworks have been produced, making art accessible to all across France. By selecting diverse building types, such as schools, town halls, corporate headquarters, and police stations, the 1% initiative reached audiences less familiar with museums. Notable artists who contributed to this program include Calder, Buren, and Orlan. A 1963 article in Le Monde stated : “The 1% was not created to provide work for ‘poor artists,’ as the minister may have suggested, but to give all artists an opportunity to contribute to the beautification of public buildings, in keeping with the old tradition of state patronage.” Thanks to this law, Sabatier was able to fulfill his dream of creating monumental art. Nicknamed the “King of the 1%”, he secured numerous commissions, particularly in Paris’s La Défense district, where his works were integrated into the lobbies of skyscrapers. Collaborating closely with modern architects of the time, his projects took him across France and beyond—to Germany, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Cameroon.
But why was he more successful than other artists? “Probably his power of conviction,” explains his son. Convinced of the importance of integrating art into architecture, Sabatier joined Le Mur Vivant in 1966, a movement and journal advocating for a synthesis of the arts in service of architecture. Its members included architects Maurice Novarina and Le Corbusier.
In 1972, to celebrate the launch of the perfume Audace, Rochas organized a competition for the façade of its new Parisian headquarters in the 8th arrondissement. The design had to embody the brand’s boldness, allow natural light to filter through, and have an ephemeral quality to enable renewal. Sabatier won with an audacious proposal: representing the perfume’s floral notes using thermoformed PVC tubes.

Sabatier established his workshop in Aurouër, near Moulins, surrounded by ponds and hedgerows, a setting that deeply connected him to nature. He collected fossilized wood, stones, and other “objects of poetic reaction,” as Le Corbusier called them. Near the workshop, in the middle of a pond, stands his final masterpiece : La Sidérolite (1995-2001). Resembling a meteorite-sanctuary that landed on water, it is composed of thousands of stainless steel tubes. Designed for a single person, the artwork invites contemplation of a fragmented world. Sabatier wrote: “It is an invitation to travel, to meditate on ‘where do we come from, where are we going?’ Inside this stainless steel meteorite, time stands still. The noise of the world reaches us in resonance; it becomes a cell for meditation and reflection.”
Echoing Pascal’s Pensées, “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me”, La Sidérolite offers a suspended journey, a celestial mechanism that elevates the spirit to spirituality. 

Pierre Sabatier, Pierre Sabatier, Éditions de l’Amateur, 2024, features contributions by Anne Bony, Axelle Corty, and Frédéric Migayrou, with photographs by François Hallard and Pierre Sabatier.

JACINTHE GIGOU

Jacinthe Gigou, an art and architecture historian, has spent the past twenty years promoting and disseminating modern architecture. She worked as a curator at CIVA and served as the director of the heritage agency Arkadia in Brussels until 2020. She co-founded the Brussels Art nouveau & Art Deco Festival and the Brussels Biennale of Modern Architecture. In 2021, she established Modernista, a platform dedicated to Belgian Modernism.
Alongside her curatorial work, she contributes as an architecture journalist and critic for various media outlets and co-authored the book 150 houses you need to visit before you die.

Instagram : @modernista.be