Roger Capron – Décor pour la Promenade du Larvotto, 1968

In 1968, Roger Capron created an architectural décor to adorn the facades of the premises under the Larvotto promenade.

The marine theme having been defined when the work was commissioned, Roger Capron created twenty-nine panels of stylized visions of the Mediterranean seabed, featuring fish, seaweed and shellfish in varied reliefs and iridescent gradations of pink and white, to adorn the walls of the Principality’s new beach.

Made from glazed terracotta, the tiles are the result of a new process developed by Roger Capron and Jean Derval, known as “WM”. This industrial process enabled the manufacture of unbaked clay bricks with alternating sawtooth-shaped reliefs, the profile of which evokes the letters WM. The raw clay bricks were then worked with mirettes, which cut, slice and hollow out the clay to create relief patterns, before being fired and glazed. While Roger Capron subsequently used stoneware for most of the WM brickwork, the Larvotto panels, among the oldest, are in glazed earthenware.

This monumental work by Roger Capron was removed in 2019 as part of the redevelopment of Larvotto beach. In 2024, it was reinstalled in the Galerie des Salines after a conservation-restoration project supervised by the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco (NMNM), which is the work’s depositary, in close collaboration with the Direction des Affaires Culturelles, the Institut du Patrimoine, the Direction des Travaux Publics and the Réserve-Gestion de collections.

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This work is part of the Chemin des Sculptures Rainier III itinerary, created on the initiative of the Direction des Affaires Culturelles in collaboration with the Institut du Patrimoine, the Direction de l’Aménagement Urbain and the Délégation Interministérielle chargée de la Transition Numérique de Monaco.

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