The Monster - Raymond Moretti

Raymond Moretti began his artistic work in the studios of the Victorine in Nice. He gradually creates an incredible sculpture-architecture that is both protean and evolutionary, which Joseph Kessel will baptise Le Monstre.
Moretti then decided to leave for the capital in the early 1970s, moving his Monstre with him. It was to be a real expedition. The artwork was exhibited temporarily in one of the Baltard pavilions in the Halles district, before moving permanently to an impressive 1,000 m² cave in La Défense from 1973 onwards.
Le Monstre has since resided in the antres of La Défense, and its development continued until the death of its master on 3 June 2005.
Invisible to the general public, Paris La Défense, as part of the project to enhance the value of the artwork, is thinking about an alternative way of making it accessible to all, in safe conditions that are not currently available in the current configuration of the site.

A word about the artist

Raymond Moretti, born in Nice in 1931 of Italian parents, illustrated the front page of the "Magazine Littéraire" for more than twenty years and began painting at a very young age.
At the age of sixteen, he produced his first artwork Moïse brisant les tables de la loi, acquired by the University Museum of Jerusalem. His paintings evoke the Holocaust in Cris du monde, a series of twelve oils, exhibited at the Tel-Aviv Museum.

With his friend Jean Cocteau, he paints gouaches and an oil. He meets Pablo Picasso with whom he develops a strong friendship. A man of passion, particularly for jazz and La Défense where he lives and creates. In La Défense, Raymond Moretti also created an artwork, Pendule, installed in the Quatre Temps shopping centre but which was removed when the place was restored. In the La Défense district, he has also dressed an airing chimney with an artwork, Le Moretti.
He disappeared on 3 June 2005.