Dellupi Arte is happy to announce from October 27 to December 23, 2022, the exhibition Karel Appel - Enrico Baj, presenting for the first time together a group of important works by these two artists. The exhibition will bring together a selection of around twelve works, suggesting visual affinities and chromatic associations that are recurrent in their research.
Traces of figurality are a constant element in Karel Appel's canvases, in which the power and physicality of colour amplify the expressiveness of the pictorial material. Iconic works from the CoBrA period such as 'La nurse' and 'Bird, Children and Flowers' - both from 1950 - are exemplar of a new figurativeness of expressionistic origin that strongly influenced European artistic culture.
Other important works from the 1950s are also on display, where faces and figurative signs break down to become abstract elements. The pictorial impasto prevails on the canvas, as in the works “Untitled”, 1956 or ‘Two Heads with a Landscape’, 1958, characterised by the materiality of the pigments and powerful, decisive brushstrokes.
In Enrico Baj's characters, the figure is transformed into a fairytale-grotesque iconography, recreated through materiality and polymaterism. Starting with pictorial works, Baj developed the technique of collage, creating iconic assemblages with fabrics, medals, trimmings and small objects applied to the surface of the painting. His art opens up to all kinds of materials, condensing the tragic and the grotesque, the lyrical and the playful in his subjects, revealing a strong civil commitment and a critique of contemporaneity. Ironic and sarcastic works such as “Il re e la regina”, 1960, or “Il conte Suwarow Rymnisky col suo aiutante di campo durante la campagna di Russia”, 1965, are also a portrait of modern culture.
By fusing figuration and abstraction in an unprecedented and powerfully suggestive language, Appel and Baj have given rise to new forms of expression, creating works that are exuberant, immediate, and charged with vitality.
