ROME, ITALY.- Italian painter Enrico Baj, 79, died in Vergiate, Varese, where he lived. Baj was among the first ranked European avant garde artists since the 1950’s, together with Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Jorn and the Cobra group, and Yves Kelin. His work, influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism , developed for over half a century in the field of figurative art (painting, carving, sculpture, ceramics), essay writing (with 15 books published), journalism and continuing association with poets and writers.



There are two threads to his large production: denunciation (from the atomic menace to human violence and aggression) and humor (from the grotesque to the black). His works were pervaded by a vein of playfulness and irony. Baj, in a continuous process of intellectual creativity used ever more disparate materials, from traditional colors to collages of objects he had found, of old decorations, braids and general medals.



Baj studied at Milan’s Brera Academy and was keenly interested in the post-war era of nuclear power. He co-founded the Nuclear Movement in 1951 and was also affiliated with the Bauhaus, Surrealist and neo-Dadaist movements.



Art critic and Italy’s former culture undersecretary, Vittorio Sgarbi, described Baj’s surrealism of the 1950s and 1960s as "strongly linked to the reality of that period, in an artistic language that was fantastic and expressive."