Enrico Baj - Framed etching: Catherine Marie de Lorraine Duchesse - 1967 - Sold

Beautifully framed etching by Enrico Baj. Title: Catherine Marie de Lorraine Duchesse de Montpensier. Year: 1967. Dimensions work: H. 42 X W. 35 cm Framed H. 71 x W. 51 cm. Number: 10/190. The work is signed lower right, in pencil, by the artist "Baj". Published by Prent 190. Work has a water stain at the bottom left, in the work it is not visible on the white, see photos for a good impression. Italian painter, sculptor, graphic artist and writer on art, born in Milan, where he studied art part-time at the Brera Academy while reading for law school. In 1951 he helped found the Nuclear Art Movement. This was actually a form of *Tachism, but referred to the contemporary fear of nuclear war. He wrote, "From the first atomic bomb, I felt that humanity lived in a constant state of watchfulness and fear, and that destruction hung over our heads more than ever." His concern over the matter even led him to describe a technique of enamel paint and distilled water as "heavy water." From 1955 he started to use collage in works that parallel both *Pop art and *Nouveau Réalisme. A passionate anarchist, he bitterly denounced the powerful, especially the military, in such works as the Generals series, In other works he used Meccano or wittily placed leprechaun-like figures in cheap paintings of landscapes or glamorous bodies suggesting some sort of alien invasion. Creatures from Other Planets Violate Our Women is the title of a 1959. André *Breton was a proponent of his work and included him in the latest edition of Le Surréalisme et la peinture from 1965. His large painting Funeral of the Anarchist Pinelli ( 1972) was forcibly removed from public view after the murder of the police chief widely believed to be responsible for Pinelli's "accidental" death by defenestration. Further reading C. Masters, obituary, The Guardian (July 9, 2003)