César Baldaccini (1921-1998) - Compression billets Air France

Original lithograph
Signed in pencil by the artist
Numbered 15/100
On Arches vellum, format 72 x 56 cm
The work is framed in a dark blue frame, slight damage (small dent) in the frame (see photo).

"Compression billets Air France" is an original lithograph by César Baldaccini, created circa 1990. The work represents a "compression portrait" composed of Air France airline tickets, faithful to César's artistic approach: visually transpose the act of compressing everyday objects.

Signed in pencil by the artist and numbered (artist's proof), it is a lithograph of 72 × 56 cm. It belongs to the series of compressions of various materials — after car bodies, gold jewelry or tin cans — where César expanded his concept of compression to all kinds of consumer objects. Here, the airline tickets, symbols of travel and the commercial world, are "crushed" and superimposed to form a dense composition, both ironic and aesthetic, in the spirit of Nouveau Réalisme of which César was a member.

César (César Baldaccini, 1921–1998) is a French sculptor, born in Marseille. Trained at the Beaux-Arts de Marseille and then at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris, he began in 1952 to sculpt welded scrap metal in Trans-en-Provence. In 1961, he joined the group of the Nouveaux réalistes alongside Arman, Niki de Saint Phalle and Mimmo Rotella.

His artistic signature rests on directed compression: with the aid of a hydraulic press, he compresses automobiles, fabrics and other objects — a critical gesture toward consumer society. He also developed polyurethane expansions and the famous Empreintes (Pousse, Sein, Poing…) resulting from pantographic enlargement.

Recognized on the international scene from 1970, he has exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Gallery and the MoMA. He is also the designer of the César Award trophy (1976), France's emblematic cinema prize. A retrospective devoted to him was held at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 1997.