César

Birth: January 1, 1921 - Marseille, France

Death: December 6, 1998 - Paris, France

César, in full César Baldaccini, was a French sculptor who was at the forefront of the New Realism movement with his radical compressions (compacted automobiles, discarded metal, or rubbish), expansions (polyurethane foam sculptures), and fantastic representations of animals and insects.

César used a hydraulic press to form many of his compressions and he occasionally used a welding torch or sledgehammer. One of his more widely available works, reproduced in many sizes for commercial sale, was a representation of his thumb; a 40-foot version was erected in the Parisian quarter of La Défense. César’s most massive work was a 520-ton barrier of compressed automobiles erected at the Venice Biennale in 1995.

Because his creations were often interpreted as critiques of consumerism, César’s consumer-waste sculptures were sometimes compared to Andy Warhol’s Pop Art.

In 1975 the French film industry commissioned him to design its annual award, the César, a compression-styled gold statuette quite distinct from its older American cousin, the Oscar. He became an officer of the French Legion of Honor in 1993, and in 1996 he received the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for sculpture.

* Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "César". Encyclopedia Britannica, 1 Jan. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cesar-French-sculptor. Accessed 6 January 2023.