Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 13

Enrico Baj
Italian Surrealist Pop Art Serigraph Enrico Baj Pop Art Silkscreen Foil Print

c.1975

About the Item

Enrico Baj (1924-2003) Italian, limited edition print. Hand signed and numbered Signature on the corner. Edition 44 of 45. metallic silver aluminum. Baj was an Italian artist best known for his political collages, prints, paintings, and sculptures. He was close to the surrealist and dada movements, and was later associated with CoBrA. Italian artist Enrico Baj (1924-2003) was born in Milan into a wealthy family, but left Italy in 1944 having upset the authorities and to avoid conscription. He studied at the Milan University law faculty and the Brera Academy of Art. Italian Surrealist Pop Art. Artist, attorney, ironist, writer, sharp critic, and political dissenter, Enrico Baj brought an urgent, refreshing and unique voice to the art of his time. In 1951 he founded the Movimento d'Arte Nucleare (the Nuclear Art Movement, or Art for the Nuclear Age) with Sergio D'angelo whose manifesto stated that its members "desire to demolish all the 'isms' of painting that inevitably lapses into academicism, whatever their origins may be." Baj took inspiration from the most radical notion of Surrealism (he joined the COBRA Group in the late 1940s), adhered to Ubu's sardonic and rocambolesque spirit and André Breton (in Le Surréalisme et la peinture) claimed him for his movement. His work was acclaimed by Gillo Dorfles as kitsch pioneer and embraced by artists like Asger Jorn, Marcel Duchamp Andy Warhol and Max Ernst. Baj's work reflected a necessity for continuous re-evaluation and renovation in which the experimental process took precedent over the realized objects. Enrico Baj was one of the most important contemporary Italian artists. Playing a leading role in the Fifties and Sixties avantgarde alongside Lucio Fontana, Asger Jorn, Manzoni and Yves Klein, Baj established close ties with Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, E. L. T. Mesens, and other artists of the Cobra group, Karel Appel and others, with New Realism, Surrealism and Pataphysics. Baj's output includes his Modificazioni paintings (1959-60), a visual farce in which Baj modified kitschy commercial paintings in order to push further still the Dada anti-art idea, and his Idraulica series (2002) consisting of sculptures and assemblages made from hydraulic plumbing fittings. Baj's Generali, gorilla-like figures with ferocious expressions, laid down upon a floral fabric background, whose effeminacy clashes with the general's predatory qualities, making them even more absurd and demonstrating both the comedy and the tragedy of the frail human ego as it searches for validation and self-worth. A series of his portraits, assemblages in which Baj address the absurdity of human self-perception and a critic to the provincialism of the Italian bourgeoisie will also be exhibited. Previous main exhibitions include: The Art of Assemblage, MoMA, New York, 1961; Pittura a Milano dal 1945 al 1964, Milan, 1964; XXII Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 1964; Baj's at Marconi, Studio Marconi, Milan, 1967; Gemeentemuseum, L'Aja, 1967; Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 1971; Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, 1971; Enrico Baj. Opere 1951-2001, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma, 2001/2002. Many of his works show an obsession with nuclear war. He created prints, sculptures but especially collage. He was close to the surrealist and dada movements, and was later associated with CoBrA. As an author he has been described as a leading promoter of the avant-garde. He worked with Umberto Eco among other collaborators. He had a long interest in the pseudo-philosophy 'pataphysics. In 1951 he founded the arte nucleare movement with Sergio D'Angelo, which unlike abstract art was overtly political. Baj himself was aligned with the anarchist movement. His most well-known pieces are probably the series of "Generals": absurd characters made from found objects such as belts or medals. This one has nude angel cherubs and nudes, mildly erotic, cartoon imagery. He made numerous works using motifs from other artists, from Leonardo da Vinci to Pablo Picasso. Sometimes he recreated entire works of other painters. Baj had his debut in New York in 1960, as part of the exhibition Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanters’ Domain, organized by Marcel Duchamp and André Breton at D’Arcy Galleries. The following year, his work was included in the influential exhibition Art of Assemblage (1961), organized by William Seitz at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1964 a room devoted to Baj’s work was presented in the 22nd Venice Biennial, and three major retrospectives followed in 1971, held at Palazzo Grassi, Venice; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Musée de l’Athénée, Geneva. Recent exhibitions were held in the following venues, among others: the 55th Venice Biennial (2013), Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan (2013), and Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2001-2002).
  • Creator:
    Enrico Baj (1924-2003, Italian)
  • Creation Year:
    c.1975
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 29.5 in (74.93 cm)Width: 22 in (55.88 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Surfside, FL
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU38210479562
More From This SellerView All
  • Mod 1970s Israeli Judaica Foil Print 12 Tribes of Israel Zodiac Signs Hebrew
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Genre: Israeli Batia Adith Subject: Biblical Medium: Print Surface: Paper Dimensions w/Frame: 30 1/2" x 21 1/2"
    Category

    1970s Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Foil

  • Surrealist Carborundum Etching, Homage a Rodin
    Located in Surfside, FL
    This is from a portfolio Hommage A Rodin. It included a lithograph by Henry Moore, Ossip Zadkine, Berto Lardera, an etching by Robert Couturier and an etching...
    Category

    1960s Surrealist Abstract Prints

    Materials

    Etching

  • Surrealist Figurative Aquatint Etching California Modernist Sculptor Artist
    By Jack Zajac
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Jack Zajac, American, born 1929 1964 Etching and aquatint hand printed on Fabriano paper, pencil signed and editioned. This one depicts winged angels. Edition Roman Numeral III Ima...
    Category

    1960s Surrealist Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Etching, Aquatint

  • Surrealist Figurative Aquatint Etching California Modernist Sculptor Artist
    By Jack Zajac
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Jack Zajac, American, born 1929 1964 Etching and aquatint hand printed on Fabriano paper, pencil signed and editioned. Edition Roman Numeral III Image: 12 9/16 x 8 5/8 in. (31.9 x 2...
    Category

    1960s Surrealist Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Etching, Aquatint

  • Surrealist Figurative Aquatint Etching California Modernist Sculptor Artist
    By Jack Zajac
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Jack Zajac, American, born 1929 1964 Etching and aquatint hand printed on Fabriano paper, pencil signed and editioned. Edition Roman Numeral III Image: 12 9/16 x 8 5/8 in. (31.9 x 2...
    Category

    1960s Surrealist Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Etching, Aquatint

  • French Abstract Surrealist Color Lithograph Andre Masson
    By André Masson
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Published Benincasa Carmine. Edizioni SEAT, Torino, Italy. Offset directly from the original plates. Limited edition. This is not hand signed or numbered. Signature in the printing plate. Size is of the full sheet. André-Aimé-René Masson (4 January 1896 – 28 October 1987) was a French artist. Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but when he was eight his father's work took the family first briefly to Lille and then to Brussels. He began his study of art at the age of eleven at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, under the guidance of Constant Montald, and later he studied in Paris. He fought for France during World War I and was seriously injured. His early works display an interest in cubism. He later became associated with surrealism, and he was one of the most enthusiastic employers of automatic drawing, making a number of automatic works in pen and ink. Masson would often force himself to work under strict conditions, for example, after long periods of time without food or sleep, or under the influence of drugs. He believed forcing himself into a reduced state of consciousness would help his art be free from rational control, and hence get closer to the workings of his subconscious mind. Masson experimented with altered states of consciousness with artists such as Antonin Artaud, Michel Leiris, Joan Miro, Georges Bataille, Jean Dubuffet, and Georges Malkine, who were neighbors of his studio in Paris. From around 1926 he experimented by throwing sand and glue onto canvas and making oil paintings based around the shapes that formed. By the end of the 1920s, however, he was finding automatic drawing rather restricting, and he left the surrealist movement and turned instead to a more structured style, often producing works with a violent or erotic theme, and making a number of paintings in reaction to the Spanish Civil War (he associated once more with the surrealists at the end of the 1930s). Under the German occupation of France during World War II, his work was condemned by the Nazis as degenerate. With the assistance of Varian Fry in Marseille, Masson escaped the Nazi regime on a ship to the French island of Martinique from where he went on to the United States. Upon arrival in New York City, U.S. customs officials inspecting Masson's luggage found a cache of his erotic drawings. Denouncing them as pornographic, they ripped them up before the artist's eyes. Living in New Preston, Connecticut his work became an important influence on American abstract expressionists, In particular Arshile Gorky drew on it, as did Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Following the war, he returned to France and settled in Aix-en-Provence where he painted a number of landscapes. Masson drew the cover of the first issue of Georges Bataille's review, Acéphale, in 1936, and participated in all its issues until 1939. His brother-in-law, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan...
    Category

    20th Century Surrealist Abstract Prints

    Materials

    Lithograph, Offset

You May Also Like

Recently Viewed

View All