"Figura nucleare" 1956
Mixed media, textile, h 56 x 46 cm
with signed photo certificate by the artist
Exhibited at Dayton's Gallery, Minneapolis &
Galerie Ile de France, Paris
Contact the Gallery by phone 02 539.23.09 or
​group2gallerybrussels@gmail.com for more info.

Enrico Baj in 1964, photo by Erling Mandelmann
A rebel with many causes :
Dada, Surrealism, Avant-garde and Cobra.​

Enrico Baj was born in Milan on October 31, 1924, and studied at the Accademia di Brera. In 1951 he founded together with Sergio Dangelo and Gianni Dova​ the "Movimento Arte Nucleare" , which was considered as the italian Cobra movement, in order to highlight the danger and possible consequences of nuclear warfare. His first solo exhibition was held in Milan at the Galleria San Fedele. With his friend Asger Jorn, the danish co-founder of Cobra, he founded in 1953 the "International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus", in reaction against the growing rationalization and geometry of art, and the following year he organized the "International Ceramics Meetings" at Albisola near Genoa in Italy.
In 1956 Baj exhibited at the Taptoe Gallery in Brussels together with Jorn, Alechinsky​, Walasse Ting, Dotremont, Wyckaert, Reinhoud and Roel d'Haeze and in 1965 he participated at the "Pop Art New Realism"​ exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
Baj’s artistic experiments resulted in multicolored collages made from many different materials. His most famous series about Generals was made as a strong criticism against the military. Baj supported actively the anarchist movement in Italy. He was "Satrap"​​ at the "College of Pataphysics", which he founded in 1963 together with Man Ray  in tribute to Alfred Jarry, the writer of the Ubu plays and as such was often the victim of state censors. Throughout his life Baj was in close contact with poets and intellectuals, both in Italy and abroad, and collaborated on numerous occasions to produce prints or original multiples for several artist books, such as "Il Giardino delle delizie" by ​Umberto Eco. He collaborated with many artists such as  Marcel Duchamp with whom he made a parody of the Mona Lisa, Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni. Enrico Baj died in Vergiate (Varese), in 2003.

Cover of the "Bolaffi" catalogue raisonné by Herbert Lust,
​Bolaffi Publishing Houde, 1973

 

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