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Monaco Sculptures: nearly 50 works in the gardens around the Casino de Monte-Carlo

Updated on April 30, 2026

Summary

Highlights:

With Monaco Sculptures, the Principality is transformed into an open-air gallery. Nearly fifty modern and contemporary works invest the gardens and emblematic places around the Casino de Monte-Carlo, offering an immersive artistic experience, accessible throughout the summer.

Organized for the seventh year by Artcurial, the exhibition Monaco Sculptures unfolds from April to early September 2026 a journey of nearly fifty modern and contemporary works in the gardens and squares around the Casino de Monte-Carlo and also at the Monte-Carlo Beach. Highlight of the event: an auction on 7 July at the Salon Belle Époque of the Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo, including the famous Pouce de César estimated to be worth between 500,000 and 800,000 euros.

Monaco Sculptures, in partnership with Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer, has gradually established itself in the Monegasque cultural landscape and offers an open-air exhibition in public spaces and in certain establishments of the Resort. Thus, the works that have found buyers will only leave the Principality at the beginning of September.

Interview with Martin Guesnet

Martin Guesnet, senior associate director of Artcurial:

"Monaco Sculptures is both an immersive experience and an art market event"

Martin Guesnet © Artcurial

What makes Monaco Sculptures unique?

Only in Monaco, at least it is one of the few places in this world where you can safely exhibit works in the open air. Monaco Sculptures is both an immersive experience accessible to all, designed in partnership with Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer and an art market event with an auction at the Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo.

Where are the sculptures displayed?

The monumental works are installed outside, in the gardens of Petite Afrique, at Les Spélugues, at the Saint James garden, at Monte-Carlo Beach, and sculptures of smaller sizes take place inside, notably at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, at the Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo and at Artcurial Monaco.

Monaco Sculptures also remains a sale. How does this commercial dimension tie in with the almost museum-like approach?

Artcurial fully assumes this dual identity. The auction will take place on 7 July 2026 at 5 p.m., in the Salon Belle Époque of the Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo, in addition to the jewelry, collectible watchmaking, and Hermès & Luxury Bags sales held the same week.

Is Monaco Sculptures also part of a broader local artistic ecosystem?

There are local synergies with other players in the art market in the Principality, notably Monaco Art Week and Art Monte-Carlo. Monaco Sculptures is not an isolated event: the exhibition participates in a collective dynamic that reinforces the place of Monaco as a summer artistic destination.

Who are the buyers of Monaco Sculptures?

We have a wide range of collectors. Some sculptures go to Europe, to the United States, others remain in the region.

A journey of works between power, poetry and light

Monaco Sculptures brings together a selection of works from the 20th and 21st centuries that move in a spectacular and sensitive way. If Le pouce de César occupies a separate chapter, other major signatures give this artistic walk a very special interest.

Le Pouce de César, announced star of the 2026 edition

"Le Pouce de César is clearly the star of this session." – Martin Guesnet describes the work of "emblematic and spectacular." This is a polished bronze with gold patina in edition of 8 copies and here the number 1/8. The dimensions are imposing: 350 x 200 x 160 cm. "The 3.5-meter format corresponds to one of the largest edited inches, excluding the unique monumental version of La Défense."

Its price is estimated at between 500,000 and 800,000 euros for the sale on July 7, 2026.

In 1965, César monumentally enlarged his own thumb from an imprint of his hand. This simple gesture became a manifest. By transforming an intimate fragment of the body into an autonomous sculpture, the artist inscribes the work in New Realism and gives it a universal scope. Declined in several sizes and materials, the thumb has established itself as one of the most recognizable signatures of sculpture in the twentieth century.

©François Fernandez

Claude Gilli, the spirit of the Midi

Another strong presence, Claude Gilli brings to the exhibition a freer tone, more playful, deeply southern. With Le Boulonnier rose, the artist from Nice unveils a vocabulary in which irony, colour and a taste for disconnect play an essential role. Associated with narrative figuration while remaining fiercely singular, Gilli draws from the imaginary of the South a solar energy, nourished by fantasy and popular culture. His work, which navigates between painting, collage and sculpture, introduces in the Monegasque journey a more playful breathing, almost theatrical, without ever losing sophistication.

©François Fernandez

Arnaldo Pomodoro, inhabited geometry

Among the most striking pieces is Cubo I by Arnaldo Pomodoro, a bronze patinated in 1964. For the great Italian sculptor, the cube is not a closed or silent form. Its surface, apparently smooth and controlled, cracks, opens, reveals a complex inner world, almost mechanical. This tension between external order and hidden tumult is at the heart of his work. Monaco thus welcomes a sculpture that never gives itself up at a single glance: you have to go around it, experience its flaws, follow its cuts, in order to enter into the thought of Pomodoro, at the crossroads of architecture and abstraction.

©François Fernandez

The softness of the shape, from Poncet to Folon

The journey also knows how to become more meditative. With Aube, in white marble, Antoine Poncet inscribes in the material a search for purity and gentleness. In another register, Jean-Michel Folon imposes with L'Oiseau one of those immediately recognizable figures who made the singularity of his universe. For him, sculpture retains something of drawing: a light, sensitive, dreamy presence, where apparent simplicity opens up to emotion. This work brings a silent, almost ethereal poetry to the journey.

César differently

If the Thumb focuses attention, Caesar also appears in the exhibition through a 1980 Car Compression. Here, the gesture changes scale and language, but remains just as emblematic. Where the thumb gives the body a monumental image, compression transforms the industrial object into sculptural material. It is the whole spirit of New Realism that resurfaces: to divert reality, to constrain it, to elevate it to the status of a work. This other facet of César reminds us how the artist was able to impose an immediately identifiable plastic vocabulary, based on metamorphosis.

Throughout this journey, Monaco Sculptures offers much more than a juxtaposition of remarkable pieces. The exhibition is a dialogue between artists, materials, generations and sensibilities. Bronze, marble, steel, stainless steel: each material has its own accent.

Key takeaways:

Monaco Sculptures presents nearly 50 modern and contemporary works in the open air.
The exhibition is held from April to early September in the gardens around the Casino de Monte-Carlo and at the Monte-Carlo Beach.
An auction will be held on July 7, 2026 at the Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo.
Le Pouce de César is one of the key works of this edition.
The event is part of a broader artistic dynamic, alongside Monaco Art Week and Art Monte-Carlo.

Monaco Sculptures unfolds an open-air artistic journey, mixing great signatures of modern and contemporary sculpture in an exceptional setting. Between immersive experience and art market, the event confirms the place of Monaco as an essential cultural destination.

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