CÉSAR (BALDACCHINI, CÉSAR)

* 1.1.1921 Marseille, † 12.6.1998 Paris

César, born César Baldaccini, was one of the most important sculptors in France. He was born in Marseille on 1 January 1921, the son of Italian immigrants. From 1935 to 1939, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Marseille. From 1943, he attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he successfully completed his studies as a student of Marcel Antoine Gimond in 1947. In the French metropolis, he met Pablo Picasso, Germaine Richier and Alberto Giacometti, who strongly influenced his early artistic work. During this time, he created his first sculptural works in plaster and iron, and from 1949 he also produced works in hammered lead foil and wire.

From the mid-1950s, César’s practice increasingly involved welding together elements of industrial waste and scrap to create figurative and semi-abstract sculptures. Under the influence of Nouveau Réalisme, from 1960 he created the prestigious ‘Compressions dirigées’. In these groundbreaking works, César processed metal parts and entire car wrecks into manageable blocks using a hydraulic scrap press. As an object artist, his emphatically ironic works also gained prominence, such as the sculptures of his own thumb or the breast of a dancer, in which we can see clear traces of Pop Art. His works can be found in the most renowned museums around the world. César died in Paris on 12 June 1998.