The Ceaseless Fascination of César

Beginning May 5, 2016 Luxembourg & Dayan will present César in Context, an exhibition organized to celebrate the radically inventive and mutable practice of renowned French artist César (1921-1998). By placing a group of his key works in juxtaposition with contemporaneous masterpieces by American and European peers, the show draws attention to the most powerful tool of the artist’s practice: a lifelong penchant for experimentation with an ever-expanding arsenal of materials and techniques.

Works on view trace the development of César’s oeuvre through his accumulated language of breakthroughs, which placed him not only within Nouveau Réalisme, the movement with which he is most often associated, but also in league with such postwar art movements as Arte Povera, Neo-Dada, and Pop Art.

On view through July 2, César in Context presents sculptures by the artist in conversation with works by Lynda Benglis, Bram Bogart, Brassaï, Bernard Buffet, Alberto Burri, John Chamberlain, John de Andrea, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Giacometti, Piero Manzoni, Robert Morris, Robert Motherwell, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Martial Raysse, George Segal, and Tom Wesselmann.

César in Context has been organized with the support of Fondation César and its Chairman and President Stéphanie Busuttil-Janssen. The exhibition, which will be accompanied by a new publication, provides New York audiences with a foretaste of the major César retrospective exhibition scheduled to open at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in late 2017.

Born César Baldaccini in 1921 in Marseille, France, César achieved recognition for a sculptural practice propelled by his ceaseless fascination with the inherent properties of materials. Moving restlessly through experimental phases, he manipulated a range of unexpected mediums through technological intervention. César in Context comprises a sequence of spotlights, focusing and expanding upon the formal themes recurrent in César’s work from the 1950s through the 1990s, with each room highlighting a distinctive sculptural series. From room to room, visitors will see examples from the polyurethane foam Expansions; the figural bronze Insects, Men, Drawers, and Plaques; the compacted Compression series using materials as diverse as jute sacks, oil barrels, and copper wires; the Envelope series of objects wrapped in manipulated and distorted sheets of Plexiglass; and the Human Imprint series of cast body parts scaled proportionally with the help of the pantograph. Within each of these groupings, works by peers are exhibited to place in high relief the relevance and contemporaneity of the concerns that motived César.

In the final room of the exhibition, visitors will see works from César’s Human Imprints series -- casts of body parts that resonate with the hyperrealism of neighboring works by American artists John de Andrea and George Segal. However, César’s iconic Thumb (1966) and Main (1968) simultaneously tie his work to the French artist Martial Raysse and to American Pop artist Tom Wesselmann, who similarly exaggerated and played with the human figure.

Luxembourg & Dayan is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 10AM – 5PM.

César in Context May 5 – July 2, 2016 Opening reception: Thursday, May 5, 6-8pm Luxembourg & Dayan, New York 64 East 77th Street, New York City