Commuters on line 11 of the Paris metro will be familiar with these three mosaic murals created in the late 1980s. Created by mosaic artists Pepsy and Michel L'Huillier and their daughter Mathilde L'Huillier, they pay tribute to Georges Brassens and his iconic song " Les Lilas ". Two of the three mosaics, visible from the Porte des Lilas station platforms, feature the famous lilacs. The last depicts the famous singer with a pipe in his mouth. A portrait that once again brings art to the Paris metro, much to our delight. But here's the thing. According to the Racines du 93 association, these three mosaic frescoes could disappear due to seepage problems within the station.
"The station has problems of infiltration in places. A repair operation is underway. For the moment, only the white tiles on the walls have been removed. There are still the three mosaics. But they're in danger," Sylvain Oerlemans, president of the Racines du 93 association, told BFM Paris Île-de-France on January 16.
So the association decided to take action. Racines du 93 has launched an online petition to save " this heritage work ". Launched last summer, the petition has so far attracted over 6,800 signatures.
In this petition, Racines du 93 points out that mosaicist Michel L'Huillier exercised his"moral right" on December 10, reminding RATP " to respect its initial commitments ". In an interview with Le Parisien on January 15, Michel L'Huillier explains that he has been in discussions with the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens since 2023, and confides that he has no intention of " letting go".
For its part, RATP reiterates that it is " very attached to the heritage of the Paris metro ". " RATP would have liked, as far as possible, to preserve these frescoes, but the technical constraints associated with the operation make it impossible to preserve them in situ ", it said in Le Parisien, adding that it would like to find solutions to " preserve the memory of this heritage or imagine a new intervention in homage to Georges Brassens ".
