This sculpture is based on a cast of the artist’s own thumb, the original version of which was produced for an exhibition on the theme of the hand. As César told the French art critic, Georges Boudaille, in 1965: “This thumb is a thing which interests me passionately, I like it just as much as my other sculptures. I could be reproached for not having made it with my own hands. But then, what is the role of dreams, of imagination?” Today this is perhaps the most well-known of César’s subjects, since a forty-foot version, erected in 1994, can be seen at La Défense in Paris.