After studying and practising athleticism at a high level, he began to accumulate rubbish odds and ends that he preserved under plexiglas.
This work received attention and critical praise in 1961, and at a commercial gallery in Milan, his exhibition sold out 15 minutes before the opening.
In October 1960, Raysse, together with Arman, Yves Klein, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Jacques Villeglé and the art critic and philosopher Pierre Restany founded the group Nouveaux Réalistes.
Their work was an attempt at reassessing the concept of art and the artist in the context of a 20th-century consumer society by reasserting the humanistic ideals in the face of industrial expansion.
In 2011 Raysse's painting, Last Year in Capri (Exotic Title), sold for $6.58 million at Christie's auction, the most expensive price paid for a work by a living French artist.