Realized in 1976 by Maurice Calka (1921-1999), these two polychrome works consist of two mosaics with colored tiles in brown tones, representing a tulip and a hen running up the entire height of the walls (about ten meters high). They are located in the hall of building A of the Law Faculty.
About the artist
An author committed through the obligation of the 1% artistic
Maurice Calka (1921 – 1999) was a French sculptor, designer and urban planner.
First Grand Prix de Rome in 1950, former head of workshop and professor at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (ENSBA), prize from the French Academy of Architecture, medalist from the city of Lille, he was also a former member of the urban planning research and proposal team of the Ministry of Construction.
In total, he produced 47 works of art as part of the artistic 1% public order. He not only made mosaics but also sculptures, bas reliefs or fountains.
“I never admitted that the work of art should essentially be the business of galleries and episodic salons and that a public art interesting everyone was not promoted. (…) I have made constant, considerable efforts to encourage architects and town planners to collaborate with plastic artists so that public art could be established, that would be dense enough to significantly enrich the urban fabric of cities, large or small, old. or modern. ” Maurice Calka, 1980
Second part of the work, the mosaic hen – 2021 – © Florent Bourget 
Details of the tulip flower – 2021 – © Florent Bourget
National and international fame
Maurice Calka has also produced monumental works internationally on the occasion of a large urban art commission.
In 1954, he produced, among other things, the 12 m high “Lion of Judah” in freestone in front of the national theater in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. This sculpture has a very particular silhouette and the radicalism proposed by the artist was approved by Emperor Haile Selassie I himself.
At the end of the 1960s, Calka also developed a passion for design. From his work and his research on the implementation – particularly on plastic materials- will notably emerge the Boomerang desk and its monumental version, the “PDG” (which is French for CEO) having special compartments to integrate a telephone or a cigarette lighter. Iconic, this desk is available in 41 different colors. Timeless, Georges Pompidou ordered one for his office at the Élysée, Kanye West owns another, white, enthroned in his Los Angeles office among the works of Kaws, Murakami, or George Condo.
In 2003, part of the Calka collection entered the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art – Center Georges-Pompidou.
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