César Baldaccini (Marseille 1921 - Paris 1998)


About

CÉSAR BALDACCINI is a French sculptor.
Part of the New Realism movement born in 1960, he is the creator of the trophy for French cinema's César awards ceremony, as well as the previous trophy for the Bocuse d'or cookery competition.
After completing his studies, unable to work in stone as the material was too costly, the artist turned to other materials such as plaster and iron (1947), creating his first sculptures with materials recovered from scrap yards (tubes, bolts, screws), materials which are also found in the Venus de Villetaneuse (1962).
Numerous exhibitions followed (Venice Biennale, Galerie Lucien Durand, Sao Paulo Biennale, Documenta II).
In 1961, César Baldaccini became close to Marino di Teana and joined the Nouveaux Réalistes group.
Throughout his life, the artist cultivated his image as an eternal craftsman, welder and, above all, great seducer, using a variety of distinctive techniques, such as the compressions he overexploited from 1980 onwards in the Reinventions of his earlier sculptures, then, from 1985 onwards, the comeback with the Poules patineuses series and, finally, the Reliefs, whose compositions are made from old jugs.
In his final years, he held numerous exhibitions and retrospectives (at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, then in Paris in 1997, as well as in Malmö, Milan, Sao Paulo and Mexico City) and then ended his career with a series of self-portraits that brought him face to face with death.
It was twenty years after his death that César Baldaccini was exhibited by the Centre Pompidou, which recognized his "major contribution to the history of sculpture".

Work Selection

Alternate Text
L'homme oiseau