César

To connote the sculptural work of César is the use of materials representative of the world of industry and consumer society. Perhaps the most significant works of the French artist have as their starting point the terminal phase of the modern industrial product, when this exhausts the function for which it was created and consequently completes its "life cycle", returning to the state of brute matter. It is precisely this condition that makes it again malleable in the eyes of César: the object therefore finds redemption in the artist's formative action, which accompanies it within a new poetic and aesthetic sphere. César's work has aroused widespread interest since the mid-fifties, when the artist created figures of fantastic men and animals through the prodigious assembly of scrap iron. In 1960 he was one of the founders of the Nouveau Réalisme: the famous Compressions of car bodies can be traced back to this area, generating prismatic shapes with a strong plastic and chromatic impact. The artist's aversion to the standardization of creative work soon led him to conceive diametrically opposed works such as the Polyurethane foam expansions, which saw him forging details of the human body of imposing dimensions. His activity in the field of monumental sculpture will later be of great importance, an opportunity for new experiments but also for a partial rapprochement with the classical subjects of the discipline. The dazzling Compression presented here, obtained by crushing cans of commercial insecticide, highlights the caustic and desecrating component of César's work.