Rating and value of Caesar's sculptures, jewelry and expansions

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Rating and value of César's sculptures

Major works of the 20th century, with high importance in the artistic and theoretical process of its time, César's Compressions sell for between €200 and €291,530 (record for the artist achieved in 2018).

Highly prized by collectors, the price of Compressions varies according to their size and material. The artist also creates other bronze sculptures, less highly priced but equally appreciated.

His sculpture L'homme de Villetaneuse, dating from 1957, sold for €166,630, while it was estimated at between €159,960 and €213,180. 

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

Artist's style and technique

César (1921 - 1998) is a major French sculptor of the second half of the 20th century. He demonstrated exceptional mastery of metalworking (bronze, welded iron, stainless steel, aluminum, then industrial materials such as plastic and polyurethane foam).

He began in the 1950s with sculptures in welded salvaged iron (fragmented objects or tools, assembled into often zoomorphic figures. In 1960, he introduced the industrial compression process, hijacking a hydraulic press to create his Compressions (cars, boxes, everyday objects are compressed into aesthetic blocks).

In the 1970s, he created Expansions, fast-setting polyurethane foam casts that form unpredictable organic masses. He thus developed a sculptural language based on gesture, directed chance and the hijacking of industrial techniques.

His aesthetic is raw, violent, provocative and often linked to an implicit critique of consumer society. He reduces forms to their pure materiality, replacing traditional modeling with folding, crushing or outgrowth.

The object is no longer reproduced but used as it is and transformed into a work by the sculptor's act, translating a conceptual and physical art.

César uses a series of processes, exploring the visual potential of a single gesture (e.g. frontal, lateral and chromatic compression). Each compression or expansion is unique, but produced according to a reproducible protocol, which also questions the notion of originality.

He also revisits the academic tradition with his Empreintes humaines, direct casts of whole bodies, presented in bronze or resin. César thus establishes himself as a paradoxical heir to Rodin, through his expressive treatment of matter, and to Duchamp, through his use of the found object and the conceptual gesture.

He is part of the Nouveaux Réalistes movement, but with a constant tension with the spectacular, automatism and technical mastery. His work blurs the boundaries between art, craft, industry and performance.

César, metal sculptor

César Baldaccini, known as César, was born in Marseille in 1921. From an early age, César was recognized as a prodigy. Endowed with an innate talent for drawing, he first studied drawing and then sculpture at the Beaux-Arts de Marseille.

He continued his training in Paris and developed an interest in modern sculpture  among others Brancusi, Picasso, Matisse and Giacometti.

He produced his first works in iron, an easy-to-handle and inexpensive material. At the time, each of César's works was unique; he worked and welded them himself in the original material.

In 1961, César experimented with Directed Compressions. The elements to be compressed are carefully selected according to shape and color, then weighed.

Similar to car compressions, he applies the Compression process to jewelry, which is now attracting vital interest on the auction market. In response to this creative process, he also creates several sculptures entitled Expansions.

They have the appearance of a thick smear of paint that has dripped onto the floor, and has not finished expanding. During his career, he collaborated and rubbed shoulders with numerous artists, notably giving the idea to Claude Victor Boeltz of exploded bronze.

He was exhibited all over the world, and enjoyed great success during his lifetime.

César Baldaccini died in Paris, aged 77.

Focus on Expansion n°2, 1970

This work is made of tinted polyurethane foam, and cast in free expansion. Its dimensions are variable, depending on casting and setting. It is part of the first major phase of Expansions produced between 1967 and 1974, and is presented on a low or bare plinth (César refuses the traditional pedestal).

The mass is organic, shapeless, smooth and soft, with a viscous, frozen appearance, as if arrested in the midst of overflow. The color is uniform (often beige, ivory or tinged with gold or silver), giving an ambivalent character between nature and artifice.

The work alternately evokes a living matter, a chemical substance, an organ or even a melted Baroque sculpture. He uses a two-component foam, poured directly onto the ground or a support, without molds or retouching.

Expansion takes place in a matter of seconds, the gesture is unique, irreversible and semi-controlled. The artist directs the casting, but the form results from the physical-chemical behavior of the material  it's an event-sculpture.

Sometimes tinted or covered with hardened resin to fix the form and give it a smooth, almost lacquered visual effect. The challenge to classical sculpture is radical: no closed volume, no pedestal and no manual modelling.

The work is inscribed in the moment, like a materialized performance, the public sees what the material has produced and not what the hand has constructed. Here, César makes an ironic critique of the precious art object : expanding foam becomes artistic matter in its own right, without hierarchy.

Through this work, he echoes the ideas of Nouveau Réalisme, with industrial materials, a raw gesture and an immediate presence.

This Expansions series established César's reputation in the 1970s, alongside Arman or Spoerri. He exerts a perceptible influence on post-minimalist or conceptual artists by exploring letting go, matter in motion and formal chance.

His signature

Not all of Caesar's works are signed.

Although there are variants, here's a first example of his signature:

Expertise your property

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