French sculptor on working like Rodin, restoring the Louvre, and his Hong Kong exhibition that got people to sit down and stare
- Polo Bourieau went from fixing up churches in France to setting up in Italy’s Mecca of sculpture before settling in Hong Kong, where ‘it was all to make’
I was born in Nantes, Brittany, in 1968. My father was an electrical engineer and my mother was at home. I had one brother and one sister. It was a regular childhood in terms of school, work and friends, but I always oriented towards working in art.
I think my interest with sculpture, stone and architecture came as I was going to college at Saint-Pierre in Nantes. It was attached to the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul, a beautiful Gothic cathedral I passed through every day. So I guess my first relationship with art and stone was with the sculptures there.
Tour de France
I joined a guild called the Compagnons du Tour de France, which is a kind of elite school for stone carvers, sculptors, masons, carpenters and artisans where you work every day like a normal job, restoring churches and abbeys. After that you have a formal dinner, and then you have three hours of compulsory study, every day, all year long.
I joined the guild when I was 15. I was very precocious in my studies. I was already speaking three languages, and I was good in geometry and subjects like that. The point of the school is it’s itinerant, so you have to change city every six months.
Nantes was the start. I restored an abbey in Brittany and then I went to Bordeaux, Marseilles, Avignon, so I toured for almost five years.
Russia déjà vu
In 1989, I had to do national service in Angers with the 21st Regiment of Engineers, which was nice as we were blowing stuff up. Now it seems funny because of what’s happening in Ukraine, as we were trying to stop Russian tanks and then the Berlin Wall fell, and then kumbaya, we are fine with the Russians.
