Black Haired Girl In The Bodysuit At The Fountain

Twenty-eight new fountains were built in Paris between 1900 and 1940, mostly in the new parks and squares created by the removal of the ring of fortifications around the city. The most imaginative fountains were created for the paris International Expositions of 1900, 1925 and 1937 Of these only the fountains built for the 1937 exposition at the Palais de Chaillot still exist. The most original Paris modernist fountain of the time was the modern glass fountain made by René Lalique for the Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées (no longer existing).
The forms of pre-war Paris fountains were mostly classical, but subject matter of the new fountains varied widely: there is a fountain honoring composer Claude Debussy (The Fontaine Debussy, Place Debussy, 1932); a fountain honoring the engineer who discovered the first artesian well in Paris; a fountain honoring Emile Lavassor, the driver who won first Paris-Bordeaux automobile race in 1895; (Fontaine Lavassor, Porte Maillot); and two fountains in the 16th arrondissement devoted to love; the Fontaine des Amours in the Bagatelle garden (1919) and the Fountain de l'Amour, l'Eveil à la vie. (the awakening of life) in Place de la Porte d'Auteil.
Only a handful of fountains were built in Paris between 1940 and 1980. The most important ones built during that period were on the edges of the city, on the west, just outside the city limits, at La Defense, and to the east at the Bois de Vincennes. Then, between 1981 and 1995, during the terms of President Francois Mitterrand and Culture Minister Jack Lang, and of Mitterrand's bitter political rival, Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac the city experienced a program of monumental fountain building that exceeded that of Napoleon Bonaparte or Louis Philippe. More than one hundred fountains were built in Paris in the 1980s and 1990s, mostly in the neighborhoods outside the center of Paris, where there had been few fountains before. The Stravinsky Fountain, the Fountain of the Pyramid of the Louvre, the Buren Fountain and Les Sphérades fountain in the Palais Royale, the Fontaine du Parc Andre-Citroen, and new fountains at Les Halles, the Jardin de Reuilly, and beside the Gare Maine-Montparnasse were all built under President Mitterrand and Mayor Chirac.
Many of the fountains were designed by famous sculptors or architects, such as Jean Tinguely, I.M. Pei, Claes Oldenburg and Daniel Buren, who had radically different ideas of what a fountain should be. Some of them, like the Pyramide de Louvre fountain, had glistening sheets of water; while in the Buren Fountain in the Palais Royale, the water was invisible, hidden under the pavement of the fountain. Some of the new fountains were designed with the help of noted landscape architects and used natural materials, such as the fountain in the Parc Floral in the Bois de Vincennes by landscape architect Daniel Collin and sculptor François Stahly. Some were solemn, and others were whimsical. Most made little effort to blend with their surroundings - they were designed to attract attention.