{"id":5661,"date":"2018-04-13T16:34:18","date_gmt":"2018-04-13T14:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marottaeditori.com\/enrico-baj-contro-il-potere\/"},"modified":"2018-04-22T16:39:29","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T14:39:29","slug":"enrico-baj-against-the-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.marottaeditori.com\/en\/enrico-baj-against-the-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Enrico Baj: play and fantasy against the power"},"content":{"rendered":"

Desecrating , entertaining, able to instill irony and sarcasm even into the most politically involved works: it’s Enrico Baj. One of the masters who gave a new facet to the italian art of the postwar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Baj was born in Milan in 1924 from two engineers with his mother being one of the first women to get graduated at the Politecnico Institute.\u00a0 He develops an interest in art since a very young age. After the war and a first attempt to graduate in medicine, he enrols in the Academy of\u00a0 Brera, then as a student-at-law, he becomes a laywer.<\/p>\n

He doesn’t leave painting that soon he converts it into his main activity. In 1951 Baj founds, along with\u00a0Sergio Dangelo<\/strong>\u00a0the\u00a0Mouvement of Nuclear Painting<\/em>. These are the coldwar years so that the reference to the atomic conflict appears to be looming. Therefore, it acknoledges the manifesto a sense of belonging to contemporaneity which is full of distress and hope at once.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Enrico Baj, General. Source: Tumblr<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Always been in contact with international literates, intellectuals and artists, in the ’50s, Baj gets interested in those groups (among Belgium, Holland and Denmark), which integrate into surrealism. Such as Surr\u00e9alisme r\u00e9volutionaire and\u00a0<\/strong>CoBRA<\/strong>, or groups nspired by dada and informal suggestions.<\/p>\n

In 1953 Baj founds, together with\u00a0Asger Jorn <\/strong>the\u00a0International<\/strong>\u00a0Mouvement for an imaginist Bauhaus<\/strong>, opposed to the New Bauhaus of\u00a0Max Bill<\/strong>, and experiments his first multi-material\u00a0collages. <\/em>Fabric, <\/i>cotton wool,\u00a0glasses, which gave his painting a new direction. To this period, it belongs\u00a0Mountains,<\/em>\u00a0canvas upon which varnish colloids full of color are applied. Also, Against style<\/em>, endorsed by personalities such as Piero Manzoni, Arman and Yves Klein.<\/p>\n

At the end of the decade, Baj publishes the\u00a0Manifeste de Naples<\/em>, which aims to launch the artistic avant-garde of the South, as in the Group 58. It gets together\u00a0Lucio Del Pezzo<\/strong>, Luca<\/strong> (Luigi Castellano), Mario Persico<\/strong>. It belongs to this period Generals and the Lady, <\/em>a series born from\u00a0<\/em>a fierce and sarcastic criticism against the power. In this video<\/a>, the critics\u00a0Luciano Caprile<\/strong>\u00a0tells about their origin during the Enrico Baj exhibition from the matter to the 2010 figure.<\/p>\n

His interest focuses on the mechanization and dehumanization of the society. Paintings-objects in which the characters are made of Lego little bricks and sculptures made out of Meccano pieces.<\/p>\n

\"Enrico
Enrico Baj, Tu quoque Brute, Fili mi<\/em>, Source: Flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His desecrating attitude influenced even the sacred monsters of the artistic avant-garde such as\u00a0Picasso.\u00a0<\/strong>Baj would pay tribute to him through the farce of\u00a0\u00a0Les demoiselles d\u2019Avignon<\/em>\u00a0and of\u00a0Guernica<\/em>\u00a0with his ” d\u2019apr\u00e8s” (1969). To\u00a0Seurat<\/strong>, Baj would dedicate the series\u00a0Chez Seurat<\/em>, in which\u00a0La grande jatte<\/em>\u00a0becomes the simbol of a immobilized middle class.<\/p>\n

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Enrico Baj, D’Apres Guernica. Source: \u00a0Tracks of Cahier d’art<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1972 he produces his first work of news report and denunciation: the\u00a0collage<\/em>\u00a0of\u00a0I funerali dell\u2019anarchico Pinelli. <\/em>Made\u00a0<\/em>out of crambling objects\u00a0<\/em>such as\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>ribbons, cordons, clutters and bows, it symbilizes the anarchic railoader’s fall to the ground. It was inspired by\u00a0I Funerali dell\u2019Anarchico Galli<\/em>\u00a0by\u00a0Carr\u00e0<\/strong> for its title.\u00a0It will be exhibited in Milan only in 2000<\/strong>: its presentation to the audience was canceled due to public order reasons. Calabresi, chief of the police, got killed that same day.<\/p>\n

\"Baj\"
Enrico Baj, Anarchist Pinelli’s funeral Source: The Globalist<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Among the artworks inspired to the political situation it figures: Nixon Parade <\/em><\/strong>and Berluskaiser. <\/em>The former\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>represents\u00a0Nixon and Kissinger at the parade for the Columbus Day from a grotesque point of view. The latter\u00a0represents Silvio Berlusconi’s conquer of the power with the elections in 1994.<\/em><\/p>\n

At the end of the ’70s, Baj produced one of hi most arduous works: the\u00a0Apocalipse,<\/em>\u00a0a\u00a0collage<\/em>\u00a0developed on over 60 metres lenght for 4 metres height. It was composed by canvas, painted with an informal technique, and contours either painted or engraved into the wood.<\/p>\n

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Enrico Baj, Apocalipse. Source: Museo MAGA<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The decline of the contemporary society, the subjugation to science and the myth of modernity are represented through an ascensional path which reminds of Dante’s circles.<\/strong> The work will be handled until\u00a02003, with the integration of contours and canvas (1983) and Gilgamesh<\/strong>‘s stories (1999 – 2003).<\/p>\n

The critic to contemporaneity, to man’s automation and consumerism is the main subject of the ’80s, while in the ’90s the works like\u00a0Tribal masks<\/em>, Felts and the <\/em>Totem <\/em>disappear.<\/em><\/p>\n

Baj’s last work, concluded few days before his death, is the The wall of\u00a0Pontedera<\/em><\/strong>, which was produced later with the contribution of the architect Alberto Bartalini<\/strong> (2005).<\/p>\n

Along the hundred metres of the mosaic, extending on the railway line of the town, the master puts his spiritual will. Enrico Baj died in Vergiate on june 16th 2003. Since 2014, the modern and contemporary art Museum of Trento and Rovereto (MART<\/strong>) hosts part of the Baj’s Archive and personal library.<\/p>\n

For Bolaffi he produced the Number 7 cover of the series\u00a0The Arabic Numbers<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Desecrating , entertaining, able to instill irony and sarcasm even into the most politically involved works: it’s Enrico Baj. One of the masters who gave a new facet to the italian art of the postwar.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,343],"tags":[355,279,356,322],"class_list":["post-5661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","category-enrico-baj-en","tag-art-multiples","tag-bolaffi-en","tag-bolaffiartes-artists-covers","tag-enrico-baj-en"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/old.marottaeditori.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/7-Enrico-Baj.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.marottaeditori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.marottaeditori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.marottaeditori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.marottaeditori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.marottaeditori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/old.marottaeditori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.marottaeditori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.marottaeditori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.marottaeditori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.marottaeditori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}