Baldaccini César (1921 - 1998)

Provenance : 
Private collection, France. 

Registered in a archives of Denyse Durand-Durel under the number 3243

The Centaur. Tribute to Picasso
Picasso dominates the pantheon of the artist's tutelary figures. Giacometti, Brancusi, had impressed the Pablo is the genius of matter, intuitively at ease in contact with any material, any malleable substance available. César would have liked to resemble him, and even physically, he will affirm it. He envied him his incredible virile power, both in his artistic creation and in his relationships with women, an unmistakable animal magnetism. Picasso is not human, he is a myth. This is how Caesar seized on the image of the Centaur, combining animal strength with human intelligence, to represent the Master. Shortly after the artist's death, the curator of the Picasso Museum in Antibes launched a major initiative involving the participation of several contemporary artists, who planned to celebrate Picasso's legacy through the creation of works in the form of a tribute. However, the funds struggled to be collected and it is only under the ministry of Jack Lang, in 1983, that the enterprise will be relaunched. César was one of the chosen sculptors, and a public commission was placed with him. From the initiative emanating from Antibes, César had in fact multiplied the projects, the Centaur quickly imposing itself to his mind as capable of embodying the superman. A small preparatory sketch of 70 cm high is quickly ready, but when it comes to considering the casting to prepare a monumental sculpture ... nothing goes right.
I first made a sketch of 0.73 cm in height, but when the foundry had to change scale to make a statue of 5 m in height, problems arose. The brushes that served as the tail of the little Centaur became brooms on a large scale, and had to be replaced by a shovel and a rake. Then it was the chest that didn't fit anymore, then the leg that seemed too short...".
The following year, a second preparatory state was developed by César, with a height of about one and a half meters, before the work was completed before the work was cast by Régis Bocquel in 1985. The five tons of bronze are then temporarily installed on the square of the Grand Palais for the inauguration of the FIAC in October 1985, before moving to the park of the Fondation Cartier in Jouy-en-Jossas. The Tribute to Picasso will finally be, in a definitive way definitively, attributed to the crossroads of the Red Cross, in the sixth Parisian district, dominating the place Michel Debré square, a rare equestrian statue of the XXth century, this "first century" non equestrian of humanity". Caesar figures himself as a Centaur wearing a visor mask bearing the effigy of Picasso; the dove of peace, dear to the master, welcomed in the palm of his hand as an infinitely precious heritage, powerful and fragile at the same time. From the torso of the man, from the entrails of the horse, spring a multitude of heterogeneous and threatening elements, while the croup seems abnormally smooth and polished, finished in the form of a tail by inflexibly erect elements, which perpetuate this aggressive rigidity. Eminently phallic, this sculpture proposes to see in the creative impulse sovereignly incarnated by the figure of Picasso, the fecundity of life itself, through the illustration of this outrageously sexual hybrid. A sort of avowed testament of the sculptor, the Centaur has a particular importance in his work, which is why one of the versions of this model will be chosen to seal his grave in the Montparnasse cemetery.

Caesar about his Centaur :

"The work had to be without artifice but with graceful, supple and light curves. My Centaur wanted to be abstract but alive, harmonious but sober, heavy but silent, serene but enigmatic, magical but realistic. The forms must be clear, airy, refined. 
If it is necessary to synthesize certain forms, I must not betray the characteristics of the animal: it must be majestic, powerful, with a constant pose and a great presence. The different parts of the body, with their spiral lines, are neither symmetrical nor regular: they present discontinuous planes that articulate into a whole, giving off a great energy. I have always been scrupulous in the transcription of the anatomy. It is there that one recognizes a great sculptor. My sculpture respects the proportions of the Athenian sculptor Polyclitus."

"The Centaur is the successful but painful result of a long process that has caused me much hesitation and questioning. Through this monument I also wanted to convey my emotions and feelings, my doubts, my certainties and also my solitude as I reached the autumn of my life. How many times I had to take the "right distance" to escape from myself, to lose sight of myself and to come back with a new vision; in total it took me three years to make and unmake all the parts of the Centaur. Through this sculpture, I sought to achieve perfection as a kind of immortality. It is my fetish work of which I keep a bronze model by my bed as a faithful companion who shares the most intimate moments of his life."

Remarks of César in Jean-Charles Hachet, César ou la métamorphose d'un grand art, Editions Varia, Paris, 1989.