The Dead Cherry Tree

This bronze statue of a dead cherry tree is the Resistance memorial in Place Jean Moulin, Saint Pierre des Corps. The sculptor is Ernest Pignon-Ernest. Behind the sculpture, the living vegetation includes cherry trees and symbolises that life returns.

Eighty-five percent of the buildings in Saint Pierre des Corps were damaged or destroyed in the Second World War. The artist says that the statue is a metaphor for the bombings, the massacres, the ideas that fuel wars. He didn't want to make a representation of a person. He felt that would have been too full of pathos. Rather he wanted to step back a bit and make something more poetic. He chose the cherry because for him there is nothing more beautiful than a cherry in flower.