Gianfranco Baruchello (Italian, b.1924) is an artist known for his experimentation with many different techniques and media, including painting, sculpture, and drawing. Born in Livorno in Tuscany, Baruchello studied for a law degree, and spent time working at a biomedical company that he founded before devoting himself to art full time in 1959. Beginning in 1962, he painted on large screens and developed his own designs. Though his style has been described as Surrealist and Dadaist, he has largely avoided consistent categorization in his work, and is more generally associated with the avant-garde. Among his close friends and influences are Marcel Duchamp, Umberto Eco, and Jean-François Lyotard.

During the 1960s, the artist spent time in New York, where he met John Cage, and took part in the group exhibition New Realists at the Sidney Janis Gallery. In 1963, he completed his first film, Il grado zero del paesaggio (Degree Zero of the Landscape), and held his first solo show at Galleria La Tartaruga in Rome. Baruchello went on to produce hundreds of paintings and objects incorporating figures, images, words, and phrases, many of which explore notions of consumerism and the structures of mass communication. His films have focused on experimentation and found objects, including 150,000 meters of celluloid containing clips from various Hollywood films, which were spliced together by the artist.

In 1968, he co-founded Artiflex, a company for the ‘merchandising of everything.’ In 1975, Baruchello established the agricultural company Agricola Cornelia SpA, which was centered around land cultivation, and, in 1998, launched his own Baruchello Cultural Foundation.

The artist divides his time between Rome and Paris.