send an email to info@guastallacentroarte.com

The exhibition “Cento anni di Enrico Baj” is the homage that Guastalla Centro Arte dedicates to Enrico Baj, one of the masters of the Italian and international neo-avant-garde, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, an anniversary also celebrated by an important retrospective underway at Palazzo Reale of Milan.

The exhibition will feature 55 works created from 1961 to 2003, paintings, masks, sculptures, multiples, all published in the catalog edited by Marco and Laura Guastalla, with an introduction by Giorgio Guastalla, who has had a long association and friendship with Baj since the 70s.

The exhibition chronologically begins with "Dame avec papillon" from 1961, objects, collages, pastels on fabric, one of the first and most important works of the series dedicated to the “Ladies”, the chromatic tones are harsh, still almost monochrome, with a prevalence of brown and a hint of green, but the applications characterize and soften the figure; the following year, a collage, charcoal on paper entitled "The garden of freedoms". Works such as “Very important person, 1969” and “Generale”, 1973 depict the famous decorated characters, which will so characterize the subsequent work of Enrico Baj who will dedicate a large part of his artistic production and poetic reflection to them, almost becoming a lens through which to look at the world and its evolution.

On this subject Baj himself writes : “these came out of my ‘mountains’ begun a few years earlier by a process of anthropomorphic identification often found in my work. These 'mountains,' demonstrated a tendency to personify themselves, taking on the very appearance of brutality and arrogance.

I added to them, almost carelessly, some military medals and ranks, and that was it: out came a first general to be followed by many. Even of simple military or non-commissioned officers. To be decorated, to receive a medal to hang on one's chest is everyone's dream. To be generals, commanders, professors, commendators, knights, to be able to give orders, to dispose of things and events, is our innermost ambition.”

Significant are the works created during the 1970s representing groups of figures busy at political meetings and gatherings where the characters take on ironic and sometimes grotesque tones: “Political meeting” from 1968, “Meeting ” from 1971 and “Meeting” from 1974 are examples featured in the exhibition.

The exhibition continues with a series of tribal masks, assemblages made from the scraps of modern civilization to create ironic and colorful masks that represent as an object “the last way of escape by means of covering and simulating the face.” Baj is very fond of this production and the many photos of him in his studio in front of the wall with the masks hanging are well known.

Another nucleus of works in the exhibition is represented by the “Ububaj in Switzerland” series, six amusing mixed media made with acrylics and collage on postcards, where the character of “Ubu” is inserted into the Swiss landscape almost as if to colonize it.

An important section of the exhibition is devoted to numerous multiples, including those made for Graphis Arte editions such as the two 1972 generals on cloth and the tributes to Amedeo Modigliani executed expressly in 1984 on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the great Leghorn artist.

Baj's work is certainly distinguished by the desecrating irony that accompanies all his artistic production and by the continuous renewal of the expressiveness and techniques used; he is one of the artists who best interprets the contradictions of modern man and to man and his vicissitudes he always refers.

He himself writes in 1990: “With painting (or sculpture), you launch messages, that is, information, and so I hope that my painting itself provides indications, news: that it says something about us and our behavior, about joys and sorrows, about life and death. [...] Whether you call it desecratory or vulgar or ironic, I believe I have always carried out an art related to human affairs.”