Since 2022, the fountain sculpture La Baume (The Grotto) has shone in new splendour: it was restored after the erection of two new post office buildings and installed on the new Métropole square. Fred Perrin designed the sculpture in 1969 for a building that has since been demolished.

The work La Baume captivates through an act of doubling: the vertically-oriented, amorphous form at the fountain’s edge appears silhouetted against the surface of the water like a shadow or reflection. In fact, there is a second element in the basin – the flowing water brings the two forms into dialogue with each other. The title La Baume (Old French for cave, grotto) is a reference to both the play of water and the openings of the sculpture, whose play of shadows evokes caves and ridges in the cliffs of the Jura mountains.

The sculptor Fred Perrin (1932, Neuchâtel–2022, Val-de-Ruz) realized numerous works for public spaces. His organic sculptures are influenced by the Jura landscape, where he grew up, spending his later years there and in Versilia in Tuscany. He sought forms that play with emptiness and density, light and shadow, curves and cut-outs, emphasizing the materiality of his sculptures even while challenging it. This can be seen in La Baume when the lines of the form are repeatedly distorted by the water that washes around them. Perrin worked mainly with stone, marble, and bronze. In his competition proposal, he envisaged the sculpture in bronze, but at the request of the Federal Department of Planning, La Baume was ultimately realized in aluminium.