Enrico Baj was born in Milano in 1924. As a young man, after fleeing Italy for a short while to avoid conscription, Baj studied law at Milan University before undertaking his artistic training at Brera Academy of Art. The intellectual Milanese world in which he spent his formative years was extremely influential on the young Baj, who formed a political ideology that was decidedly anti-establishment. This revolutionary outlook corresponded with his artistic style, and he became a proponent of avant-garde art movements, such as surrealism and dadaism. He was active as a writer and artist throughout his life, often coming into conflict with authorities through his anarchist and politically-charged works.
In 1951, Baj established the arte nucleare movement in collaboration with artist Sergio Dangelo, which sought to create art for a nuclear age; many of his paintings and collages throughout his life demonstrate an obsession with nuclear war, featuring recognisable mushroom clouds and devastated landscapes amid otherwise seemingly abstract works. In the same year, he had his first solo exhibition at the Galleria San Fedele in Milan, which showcased him as both artist and philosopher.
In 1953, together with Asger Jorn, he founded the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus which rallied against the increasing rationalisation and realism of art. Baj was one of the artists who in 1957 signed the 'Contro lo stile' (Against the Style') manifesto, advocating for preserving the uniqueness of an artist's work and rallying against reproducible stylisation.
Baj was notable in his proximity to many of the giants of twentieth-century art movements, including Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, with whom he undertook collaborations including, in 1956 creating a satirical reproduction of the Mona Lisa superimposed with Duchamp's facial features. Baj's artworks often parodied great traditional masterpieces or contemporary mass culture, and his playful and politicised approach to art and writing remained a constant thread throughout his life. Perhaps most infamously, his colossal work Funeral Of The Anarchist Pinelli (1971), based upon Picasso's Guernica and satirising the recent death of an activist in police custody, was banned from exhibition in Milan due to its inflammatory content.
Baj's artistic practice was characterised by collages of wide-ranging materials and incorporated features of abstraction and representation. Marquetry, collage, dripping and veneering were just some of the proudly artisanal techniques that Baj incorporated into his works, alongside more conventional methods of painting and drawing. His artworks are often simultaneously playful and polemic, combining raw physicality of the materials used, while also containing political undertones and his own personal critiques of contemporary society.
Baj died in Vergiate, Italy, in 2003.
