César Baldaccini (1921-1998)

César (César Baldaccini, 1921-1998) was born Marseille, France. At the time, this area of the Mediterranean port city was chaotic and economically depressed, teeming with waves of immigrants. The cross section of excess and deprivation that Marseille represented would serve as a significant muse for César’s art.

First at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in his city of birth, and later at the school’s main outpost in Paris, César studied classical sculptural and drafting techniques until the late 1940s. He later moved into a studio beneath the atelier of Alberto Giacometti. For economical reasons, César began collecting refuse metals and forging them into zoomorphic and anthropomorphic forms. Known as Fers (Irons), these objects acknowledge both the destruction of war and the subsequent reconstruction of Europe (both human and material). The works from this period demonstrate the artist’s fascination with salvaging life from waste and revealing the innumerable lives that lay hidden within material.