"Anarchism is the best track to launch creative implosion." Enrico Baj
Enrico Baj, Italian painter and sculptor, was born in Milan October 31, 1924. He died June 16, 2003 at his home in Vergiate, near Varese.
Very young, Enrico Baj marks his rejection of authority by making fun of fascist dignitaries, which earned him some trouble with the police.
He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera from 1945 to 1948.
Baj early manifested a predilection for bonding, by changing a few brush strokes painted collages and conventional paintings, religious images or landscapes.
He founded in 1951 the movement of the Nuclear Art with Sergio Dangelo.
In the mid 50s, Baj painted heads of "General" that derides pasting over pieces of cloth and forgotten or invented decorations.
Admirer of Father Ubu and works of Alfred Jarry, in 1957 he directed his first "Mountains" composed of jagged peaks and canopies made of collages and invested little monsters led by a general bristling with medals, shoulder pads and other devices .
Between 1959 and 1966, Enrico Baj approaches the surreal. He realizes many "Mirrors" with broken glass and recomposed and the first General and Dames, two theses he develops in the following years.
From 1969 to 1971 he produced a series of paintings by Picasso and Seurat. His version of Guernica is an amazing feat as he managed to make his own this masterpiece of Picasso and keep in force without plagiarism or submission.
He realizes in 1972 "Funeral of the Anarchist Pinelli", expressing his horror of all forms of oppression.
In 1977, he traveled to Mexico, Egypt and some African countries to revisit ancient civilizations. Later, he created masks and totems inspired by Africa but obtained by assembling resolutely Western materials: blocks, wood moldings, curtain cords with their glans.
In the years 1983 - 1985; monsters are grotesque, recognizable by the spiral-target hits. He works with meccanos and draws figures still evoking Ubu Roi.
In the last years of his life, the artist painted a series of paintings in protest against the election of Silvio Berlusconi.
Enrico Baj uses the technique of collage using various materials, rich and anachronistic and playing on the pictures sometimes naive, sometimes caricatured. His paintings are intended satirical, ironic and humorous seeking to ridicule the petty bourgeois world or military.
A retrospective was held in 1999 at the Museum of Modern Art and Contemporary Art of Nice.
