WHEN delegates from 50 nations signed the newly created UN Charter in April 1945 in San Francisco, its explicit mission was to keep “succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

The ceremony took place in late June and was immediately torpedoed — as it would be on many an occasion in the future — by cynical US doublespeak. On August 6 and 9 Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated.

The UN general assembly met for the first time in London in January 1946 and 13 years years later in December 1959, at the height of the cold war, the government of the Soviet Union presented the UN with a bronze sculpture, Let Us Beat Our Swords into Ploughshares, by Soviet artist Evgeny Vuchetich, creator of the Stalingrad memorial.

It symbolises humanity’s desire to put an end to war and turn weapons into creative tools.

The idea has had practical applications in the real world. After WWII, surplus armoured vehicles were turned into bulldozers, agricultural and logging tractors, as were Soviet T-34 tanks and nitrogen mustard, developed from mustard nerve gas, was key in developing the world’s first chemotherapy drug, mustine, while the Global Positioning System originates in the guidance software of long-range US missiles.

The sculpture’s title has its origin in a quote from the book of the prophet Isaiah in the Bible: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

The heroic nobility in the poise of figure emanates power, determination and confidence. There is raw grace in the vulnerability of flesh juxtaposed to the angular, sharp-edged sword transformed by the blows of the hammer.

Vuchetich’s sculpture in the north garden of the UN headquarters is an exquisite example of the realist interpretation of an ideal, retaining its expressive drama at every angle of viewing and is particularly impressive close up.