Fredens man, Hommage à Dag Hammarskjöld (Man of peace, Homage to Dag Hammarskjöld)

Artist: Émile Gilioli
Year of Cration: 1966/1980
Placement: City Library, Jönköping
Technique and material: Sculpture – bronze and diabase

Émile Gilioli’s abstract monument Fredens man, Hommage à Dag Hammarskjöld (Man of Peace, Homage to Dag Hammarskjöld) stands outside Jönköping City Library. The sculpture consists of an abstract bronze shape on a rectangular plinth of polished diabase. The sculpture is really a preliminary version and competition proposal for a monument to Dag Hammarskjöld. The idea was that the monument would be produced in a larger format and with a higher plinth. The sculpture was purchased in 1966 but has remained in place since 1980.

Dag Hammarskjöld, who was born in Jönköping in 1905, was UN Secretary-General from 1953 until he died when his plane crashed in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) in 1961. Gilioli’s sculpture from 1966 is joined by another monument dedicated to Hammarskjöld: the bronze roundel with a relief portrait, created by Rune Karlzon in 1984, which hangs on the wall next to it.

Émile Gilioli (1911–1977) was a French abstract sculptor educated at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.