Enrico Baj

Enrico Baj was born in Milan in 1924. After studying at the Brera Academy, he became one of the leading figures of the Italian avant-garde. Following his first solo exhibition at Galleria San Fedele in Milan in 1951, he founded the Nuclear Painting Movement with Sergio Dangelo.
An heir of the Surrealist-Dadaist spirit and an experimenter of original styles and techniques, Baj created collages and multi-material assemblages using the most diverse materials, among them textiles, haberdashery and upholstery items, mattress covers, medals and metallic fragments, mirrors and coloured glass.
He debuted in New York in 1960 as part of the Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanters' Domain, organised by Marcel Duchamp and André Breton at the D'Arcy Galleries.
The following year, his works were included in the historic exhibition Art of Assemblage (1961) at the MoMa in New York, curated by William Seitz. In 1964 he was assigned a room at the 22nd Venice Biennale.
From 1967 on, he regularly exhibited at Studio Marconi, and in the 1970s held his first important retrospectives (Palazzo Reale, Milan; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels).
In 1971, three important exhibitions were held at Palazzo Grassi, Venice; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Musée de l'Athénée, Geneva.
Following the artist's death on 16 June 2003, a major retrospective was held involving a number of Milanese galleries: Spazio Oberdan, Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Gió Marconi Gallery and Mudima Foundation.
Some of the most recent exhibitions were held at the following venues: the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2001-2002); the Marconi Foundation, Milan (2008, 2009, 2013, 2017); Palazzo Reale, Milan (2012); the 55th Venice Biennale and the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation, Milan (2013); Gió Marconi Gallery, Milan (2015); the Regional Archaeological Museum, Aosta and the Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, New York, (2016); the Cobra Museum, Amstelveen, Netherlands (2017).
Works by Enrico Baj have been part of prestigious collective exhibitions: Italia Pop. Art During the Boom Years, Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Mamiano di Traversetolo, Parma; Artists and Stars: The Story of Art During the Boom Years, Museo del Novecento, Milan; Cobra: A Great European Vanguard (1948-1951), Fondazione Roma, Palazzo Cipolla, Rome (2016); Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945-1965, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2016-2017); Expressions of Vandalism: Asger Jorn's Modification Paintings and their Legacy, Petzel Gallery, New York, (2019); Art Strikes Back - from Jorn to Banksy, Museum Jorn, Silkeborg, (2019); Surrealism Beyond Borders, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (2021); Surrealism Beyond Borders, Tate Modern, London, (2022); Calvino canta favole, Palazzo Ducale, Genoa, (2023).