L’ange de pierre is a monolithic white-marble sculpture executed by Pierre Székely for Mount Royal Park. Its simple, unadorned form leaves visible the rectangular shape of the block of stone from which it was carved, and its main faces have two different textures. On one side, the traces of the artist’s chisel are manifested in a very rough relief. On the other side, a smoother surface highlights the block’s abstract silhouette. On both lateral surfaces of the artwork, rounded geometric forms are carved into the stone.

The artwork is extremely evocative. Whereas its title encourages us to see in the volume the simplified figure of an angel, such as one that we create by lying down in the snow and moving our arms and legs, its simplicity also evokes a sort of imaginary letter, a schematic grapheme belonging to an unknown civilization.

This rounded three-dimensional shape with a rectilinear depth is reminiscent of the curved lines that dominated Székely’s pieces during the 1960s, found notably in his walk-in sculptures such as La cité des jeux in L’Haÿ-les-Roses (1958) and his architectural work Village de vacances Renouveau in Beg Meil, Brittany (1964–66).

Székely’s artwork was executed for the International Sculpture Symposium in Montréal (1964), the first time a symposium was held in North America. The goals of this concept, created a few years earlier in Europe, were to have artists create monumental sculptures in a context of encounters with the public and to provide public spaces with international-calibre artworks. Instigated by sculptor Robert Roussil, this symposium gathered 11 sculptors from nine countries and attracted more than 40,000 visitors. It was seen as one of the events that brought Québec into artistic and cultural modernity.