Drojevic Lipa

Biography

Lipa Drojevic, known as Lipa, was a sculptor born in 1907 in Grodno, in the Russian Empire (today in Belarus), and died in 1976 in Gattières, in the Alpes-Maritimes, France. He settled in Gattières in 1959, after an international career.
A volunteer in the French army in 1939, Lipa was taken prisoner, escaped, and joined the Gers maquis. The war, which deeply marked this period, shines through in his work. His forms, inspired by Brancusi, sometimes coexist with more tormented volumes, bearing witness to the dramas of this period.
Read more
In 1963, the commune of Gattières commissioned a Monument in homage to the Resistance fighters Torrin and Grassi, hanged by the Nazis in 1944. Lipa made two resin flames, symbolizing their martyrdom. The monument was inaugurated on August 30, 1964.
In 1999, the commune of Gattières transformed the flames into bronze, thus completing the artist's initial project. The Torrin and Grassi Monument was re-inaugurated on July 7, 1999, for the 55th anniversary of the martyrdom of the two Resistance fighters.
Lipa Drojevic, a French-Russian sculptor, combines plenitude and torment in his works marked by his experience of war. His monument to the resistance fighters, now in bronze, symbolizes the living memory of the struggles for freedom.