Valentin I, 1979 (modèle de 1956)
Bronze, Susse cast, numbered 3/8, signed on base, 47 x 80 x 21.5 cm.
40 x 80 cm
Provenance :
Galerie Najuma, Marseille
Galerie Alexis Pentcheff, Marseille
Private collection, France
Bibliography :
Denyse Durand-Ruel, César, catalog raisonné vol.1 (1947-1964), Editions La Différence, Paris, 1994, reproduced as n°167, p.143.
Based on a welded-iron model designed in the mid-1950s, this bronze was cast by Susse in the late 1970s. Assembled metal plates form a large wing, which seems inseparable from the figure.
The model is Léo Valentin, who had just died as Icare, impressing the artist's imagination. This experienced parachutist had nurtured the mad dream of flying with mechanical wings. At first, canvas membranes, attached to his arms and legs, proved inconclusive in tests, and the intrepid man transformed them into rigid wings, so as to be able to glide. He somehow managed to do this, and ended his flights by opening a parachute. At an exhibition in Liverpool, however, while he had announced the 701st and final jump of his career, an accident occurred. His parachute
failed to open, and he crashed to the ground in front of the crowd.
With this disproportionately large wing, César pays homage to the broken dream of the birdman. Nailed to the ground forever in his bronze cloak, the figure of Léo Valentin achieves the poetic intensity of a tragic icon. tragic icon.
In 1992, the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain presented the Hong Kong Cultural Center with an enlarged version of this sculpture, entitled The Flying Frenchman.