Cesar Baldaccini; Sculptor Called France’s Warhol

Cesar Baldaccini, the sculptor who created the French equivalent of the gold Oscar statuette, has died. He was 77.

Baldaccini, known professionally as Cesar and described as France’s Andy Warhol, died Sunday of cancer in his Paris home.

His golden statue of excellence, presented to outstanding artists in the French cinema since 1976, is called the Cesar.

Baldaccini attained considerable commercial success although he was often snubbed by the art establishment. One of his most famous works is “Thumb,” a reproduction of his own thumb and fingerprints. The sculpture is available in sizes for any budget, including a 40-foot-high version at La Defense corporate park outside Paris.

The artist was best known for compressing and fusing the detritus of modern life--wrecked automobiles, vegetable crates, worn blue jeans, bicycles, fake brand name watches, whatever intrigued him.

He once compacted the remains of a friend’s car after a wreck, creating a memorable sculpture for that driver’s living room.

“Cesar has incarnated sculpture at its highest level since the late 1950s,” French Culture Minister Catherine Trautmann said. “[His art] gave us a new definition of modernity.”

President Jacques Chirac praised the sculptor’s “strength, capacity for renewal and the force of his creative ideas.”

Born on New Year’s Day in Marseilles, Baldaccini was the son of Italian immigrants.

He quit school at 12 and made sausage for the family butcher but later went on to study art in Marseilles and Paris. He began sculpting with unusual materials because he was too poor to afford clay, and resorted to rummaging through city dumps for scrap metal.

“I’m not an intellectual,” he once said. “I like to touch. It’s my hands that make my head work.”