Baj's Last Creations Go on Show
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Baj's Last Creations Go on Show
(ANSA) -- Milan, October 18 -- Enrico Baj's sketches for a
monumental mosaic wall, which the acclaimed Italian artist
completed just days before his death in June 2003, went on
show on Tuesday at a top Milan art institute.
The set of ten preparatory sketches, each 20 centimetres by
one metre, will be on display at the Marconi Foundation
until November 18.
The colourful, playful drawings will later be used to
posthumously create the 'mechanical' mosaic planned by the
Milanese artist before his death from cancer at the age of 78.
The giant mosaic will be erected on a wall at the railway
station at Pontedera near Pisa, as Baj intended.
When it is completed, it will be an incredible 100 metres in
length and two metres high and incorporate mechanical
figures and designs made from Meccano.
The model construction kits for children, featuring small
coloured metal nuts, bolts, strips, wheels, gears and
plates, were a favourite with Baj who frequently used them
in his collages, paintings and sculptures.
Local government officials say The Pontedera Wall, as the
mosaic is to be called, will be a lasting monument to the
unconventional Italian artist and his work.
The Marconi show features other important Baj creations
recently acquired by the foundation, including items from
his 1950s Nuclear period and his later experiments with
mirror shards.
Baj was born in October 1924 into a wealthy Milanese family
but quickly showed a rebellious streak, running into trouble
as a youth for performing a mock salute in front of visiting
Fascist officials.
During the Second World War, Baj, by then a self-proclaimed
anarchist, escaped to Switzerland to avoid conscription. He
returned to Italy after the war and began studying at both
the Brera Academy of Art and the law faculty of Milan
University.
In 1951, he founded the so-called Movimento Nucleare
(Nuclear Movement) with fellow artist Sergio Dangelo. The
movement was an overtly political protest against the
nuclear age as well as a stand against geometric abstraction
in the art world.
Many of Baj's images from this period were dominated by
mushroom clouds and bleak landscapes.
Baj later became involved with the founders of the
surrealist and Dada movements, collaborating with May Ray
and Marcel Duchamp among others.
His best-known works are probably the Generals, a series of
grotesque, satiric collages made in the 1960s from objects
such as belts, buttons, shells and shards of glass which
were then covered in military medals. His copies of great
modern paintings by the likes of Picasso and De Chirico were
also very successful.
Baj's political works were often a source of controversy. In
1961, his Big Anti-Facist Collective Painting, a collective
work criticising the war in Algeria, was confiscated by the
Italian authorities and spent the next 25 years gathering
dust in a cellar in Milan. His 1972 monumental mural The
Funeral of the Anarchist Pinelli, about an anarchist who
police say died accidentally while in their custody, was
banned from public view.
The artist later created a series of pieces criticising
Silvio Berlusconi and the media mogul's first election
triumph in 1994.
Baj was also a writer, publishing two autobiographical works
entitled Automitobiografia (1983) and Kiss Me, I'm Italian
(1997).
--
Dan Clore
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