LYRIC ART, ABSTRACT, TACHISM/1950-1960 / Jean Degottex, Georges Mathieu, Jackson Pollock, Emil Schumacher, Emilio Vedova, etc. SURREALISM/1924-1969 / Oscar Dominguez, Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy, etc.
Issue from a wealthy family, the Italian painter and sculptor Enrico Baj was born in Milan in 1924. At the age of 14, he paints and draws. Very young, he marks his rejection of authority by making fun of fascist dignitaries visiting his hometown, earning the disapproval of the authorities. He flies to Geneva in 1944 to avoid conscription.
After the war, Baj attends the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera (1945-1948) and the Milan University law faculty, he quickly abandons the latter path after graduating. Baj is dedicated to art from 1950. At his beginnings, the artist takes as a starting point the tachism; he shows an early predilection for gluing techniques, modifying with a few brush strokes paper glued on conventional paintings, religious images or landscapes.
In 1951 he founds the Art Nuclear movement with Sergio Dangelo, overtly political movement that opposes art to the modern and threatening Human environment. Later on, Baj founds a “Bauhaus imaginist” with his friend Asger Jorn. Around 1955, the artist approaches the lyric abstraction and creates - with Edouard Jaguer and the painter Dangelo - the review “Il Gesto”. The fighting spirit of Baj is always present, he participates on the writing of several manifestos (“Against the style” in 1957, “Interplanetary Art " in 1959," Painting and Reality " in 1960). In the mid-50s, Baj becomes a painter of heads, "Heads Sun", then heads of "General", whom he turns in derision, by stickying on these portraits, pieces of fabric, obsolete passementeries, forgotten or invented decorations. Beyond the humor that emerges from these works, their delirious side reveals their subversive side.
Between 1959 and 1966, Enrico Baj associates with surrealist and takes part with them in the official events of the movement. Breton dedicates an essay to him. From his association with the poets (André Breton, Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues, Octavio Paz, etc) arise many illustrated editions. Enrico Baj expresses himself extensively by the engraving; as well as by his art paintings, the artist reveals through his masterpieces his spirit of insubordination to the established rules which he hustles without decency.
In 1972, the public discovers his major work, table-joining “Funeral of the anarchist Pinelli”, continually expressing his horror of all forms of oppression. In the last years of his life, the artist creates a series of paintings in protest at the election of Silvio Berlusconi. Enrico Baj is a painter, free, inventive, corrosive, who testifies - without mercy - the multiplicity of reality.
Issue from a wealthy family, the Italian painter and sculptor Enrico Baj was born in Milan in 1924. At the age of 14, he paints and draws. Very young, he marks his rejection of authority by making fun of fascist dignitaries visiting his hometown, earning the disapproval of the authorities. He flies to Geneva in 1944 to avoid conscription.
In 1972, the public discovers his major work, table-joining “