MuDA Jorn’s House Museum in Albissola Marina presents the first monographic exhibition dedicated to the ceramic works of Enrico Baj (1924-2003), celebrating the centenary of his birth.
2024 also marks the 70th anniversary of the International Ceramics Meeting in Albisola, held at the Giuseppe Mazzotti factory in the summer of 1954. This event was pivotal for Baj, as it allowed him to explore ceramics as a form of expression for the first time. It was equally significant for the art scene in general, as it was one of the first international gatherings where representatives of the European post-surrealist avant-garde acknowledged that communal and collective experimentation through ceramics had a foundational value for the new informal, vital, and anti-rationalist language in sculpture, decoration, and, by extension, contemporary architecture.
Enrico Baj, who, along with Sergio Dangelo, had recently founded the Movimento Arte Nucleare in Milan (1951), played a crucial role in bringing Danish artist Asger Jorn to Italy. He also assisted Jorn in organizing the 1954 meeting, which, thanks to Tullio d’Albisola, saw the Mazzotti factory host renowned artists such as Karel Appel, Corneille, Roberto Sebastian Matta, and Baj himself, alongside regulars like Emilio Scanavino, Franco Garelli, Agenore Fabbri, and Lucio Fontana.
In 2024, the Savona and Albissola Marina museums will host a significant exhibition dedicated to Enrico Baj’s ceramic works. The Jorn’s House Museum and the MuDA Exhibition Centre will feature a special section that recreates the context of the International Ceramics Meeting, with direct comparisons between artworks and documents. Meanwhile, the Savona Ceramics Museum will take visitors on a unique journey, showcasing Baj’s evolution from his first ceramics created in Albisola in 1954 to his later works crafted at the Bottega Gatti in Faenza and in Castellamonte in the early 1990s.
Baj’s ceramic production is, in fact, concentrated in specific Italian centres of ancient tradition during well-defined periods, sometimes far apart. In the three-year period 1954-56, Baj worked mainly in Albisola, at the Giuseppe Mazzotti company, producing an impressive body of works (relief plates, painted plates, modelled sculptures) adhering to the nuclear poetics he was exploring in painting and engravings inspired by Lucretius’s De rerum natura. The influence of the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (MIBI), which he co-founded with Asger Jorn in 1953, is reflected in the playful and childlike designs on industrially produced plates. In 1955, Baj also created a series of plates decorated with these criteria in Laveno-Mombello.
After parting ways with MIBI, in 1958 Baj returned for the last time to Mazzotti to sculpt what would have become one of his most celebrated series: the Mountain Heads. During the same period, he also produced important painted renditions of these sculptures on large canvases. The imagery of the “mountains” emerged from the cycle of “lands”, echoing Jean Dubuffet’s works in France, and would then evolve, through a process of image metamorphosis, emblematic of Baj’s entire research, into the first figures of the “generals” in the 1960s.
A long period followed without significant developments in ceramics until 1984-85, when Baj, as a guest of the Cooperativa Ceramica of Imola, created four large panels painted on majolica with themes related to the saga of the Ubu Roi.
In 1991 and again in 1994, Baj worked in Faenza at the Bottega d’Arte Gatti, undoubtedly the most important Italian centre for art ceramics, alongside Albisola. There, he created an important series of large ceramic pieces, some in multicoloured majolica and others in bisque, inspired by the “kitsch” and “crowds” cycles, which he was simultaneously exploring in his paintings. This experience once again positioned Baj as a cutting-edge artist, a precursor of international trends and languages, with works characterised by strong social criticism and a powerful expressive force.
Baj’s final notable work in ceramics was made in 1994 in Castellamonte, in Roberto Perino’s workshop. There, he crafted a series of “tribal masks” using his distinctive methods of assemblage and collage. In this instance, rather than employing his usual array of conventional items and everyday materials, Baj integrated pieces, components, and objects sourced from local ceramic production.
Exactly one hundred years after Baj’s birth and the publication of the surrealist manifesto, and seventy years after the creation of his first ceramic work, Baj will therefore be the protagonist of a due tribute at the Savona Ceramics Museum and the MuDA Jorn’s House Museum in Albissola Marina. This homage will focus on his ceramic work, which, despite being the least known, stands out as perhaps the most original and relevant today, especially considering the renewed appreciation for this art form.
Also with the title “BAJ. Baj chez Baj,” an extensive retrospective promoted by the Municipality of Milan, produced by Palazzo Reale with Electa, and curated by Chiara Gatti and Roberta Cerini Baj will open on 8 October with almost fifty works that are distilled in a time span that goes from the early 1950s to the dawn of the year 2000.
The scientific collaboration between Savona and Milan, between the curators and the institutions involved, aims to draw two autonomous but complementary itineraries, capable of paying homage to Baj’s eclectic genius, documented in the single catalogue, published by Electa, in which the two exhibition itineraries unravel between places, forms, materials and encounters, tracing the fascinating cosmogony of Baj, an epiphany of intelligence and creativity.
at MuDA, Albissola
until February 9, 2025