César (César Baldaccini)

Ohne Titel (Compression)
Artist
César (César Baldaccini)
Ausstellung
Nouveau Réalisme, Kunsthalle Krems, Krems-Stein, 2011 (no cat.).
Provenance
Private collection, Belgium;
Sotheby's, Paris 13.12.2006, lot 163;
Private collection, Germany, acquired from the aforementioned.
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Description
- Typical early compression of high recognition value
- One of the most important representatives of Nouveau Reálisme
- Works by the artist can be found in museums worldwide

When the sculptor César joined the Nouveaux Réalistes group in Paris in 1961, he had already been an internationally recognized artist since the mid-1950s. The idea of Nouveaux Réalisme, to place everyday objects in a new aesthetic context by integrating them into works of art, had already defined César's work. From the mid-1950s onwards, he welded scrap parts into sculptures; from 1960 onwards, he created his first "Compressions dirigées". Compact sculptures that are formed into cubes by compressing different objects made of the same metallic material - in this case metal parts from a car - in a press. Even if the result of the compression is subject to chance, in this work César succeeds in transforming the heaviness of the material into an almost poetic lightness. Always guided by the logic of the material, César sees the compressions less as an intellectual and more as a manual creative process

The work is registered under the number 982 in the Archives Denyse Durand Ruel.