Gianfranco Baruchello: Vita e Opere
BIOGRAPHY, MAIN EXHIBITIONS, MUSEUMS AND QUOTES OF GIANFRANCO BARUCHELLO 'S WORKS
Biography of Gianfranco Baruchello
Gianfranco Baruchello has developed a unique and autonomous artistic style, his philosophy is based on fragments, miniatures and many writings arranged in an apparently random way, on large white pictorial surfaces. Everything refers to the society that tends towards consumerism and the excessive haste with which we quickly throw away the products we have just bought to buy more and more.
He is considered one of the Italian exponents of Conceptual Art (with artists such as Vincenzo Agnetti , Giulio Paolini , Michele Zaza ).
Gianfranco Baruchello was born in Livorno on 24 August 1924. He followed in the footsteps of his father, a lawyer, graduating in law in 1947, then dedicated himself to the creation of the chemical company Biomedica, carrying on the activity until 1955, then in 1959 he decided to dedicate himself completely to artistic activity.
He experimented with the image through the object, building the first alphabets of signs that are the basis of his research, in a language that does not ignore the figure that is fragmented, disseminated on the canvas and reduced to minimal elements, witnessing a conceptual decentralization of space.
He was inspired in this direction by the Parisian environment that he discovered by visiting the city and meeting important artists such as Roberto Matta and Alan Jouffroy .
In 1962 he met Marcel Duchamp , in 1964 John Cage in New York, who invited him to explore the new frontiers of abstract impressionism and pop art .
He is also fascinated by the world of television, which he reproduces with subtle references in his works, through the use of slogans and symbols to show how empty the reality of the small screen can sometimes be.
Also in the 1960s, Baruchello decides to launch himself into the world of cinema, making videos with waste materials, creating a series of works, made with film clips edited together that were very successful, being exhibited among others at the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 1973, he founded the Azienda Agricola Cornelia on the outskirts of Rome. His aim was to save those spaces from rampant real estate speculation. At the end of the 1980s, the company was dismantled and the Il Giardino project was proposed in its place.
In 1998, he established the Baruchello Foundation in his previous home on the hills of Rome.
He received numerous awards, including one from the Deichtorhallen Sammlung Falckenberg in Hamburg or the nomination of artist of the year 2016 by Radio 3.
He died in Rome on 14 January 2023.
Main exhibitions of Gianfranco Baruchello
Gianfranco Baruchello's long career as an artist has seen him take part in over 450 exhibitions around the world .
Worthy of note is his participation in the New Realists exhibition held in New York in 1962 and organized by Pierre Restany , which featured artists such as Schifano , Festa and Rotella .
His first solo exhibition was in 1963, at the La Tartaruga gallery in Rome.
In the same year, he began his historic collaboration with the Schwarz gallery in Milan, which dedicated his first solo exhibition to him in 1965, entitled Gianfranco Baruchello. Use and maintenance .
1964 was the year of his first solo exhibition in the United States at the Cordier & Ekstrom gallery in New York, where he exhibited works that already presented the distinctive and mature traits of his research: fragmentation, dissemination in the pictorial space of miniaturized images simplified to minimal elements and the conceptual decentralization of space.
In 1966, he presented the projection Verifica incerta at the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York . He will return on several occasions as the protagonist of important exhibitions in these museums. 1973 is the year of his first participation in the Rome Quadriennale , an event to which he is invited again in 1986, 1999, 2014. He participated for the first time in the Venice Biennale in 1976, and will return on five other occasions (1980, 1988, 1990, 1993, 2013). He was invited to Documenta in Kassel in 1977 and 2012. He has held important retrospectives in Italy and abroad: in 2011 an anthological exhibition was dedicated to him at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome ; then Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe (2014); Raven Row, London (2017); MART in Rovereto, in 2018 and the recent exhibition Gianfranco Baruchello - Psicoenciclopedia Possibile at the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, in 2021.
The collective exhibition Vita Nuova - nouveaux enjeux de l'art en italia 1960-1975 is currently underway at the Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain in Nice, which features, in addition to the works of Gianfranco Barichello, also Carla Accardi, Alighiero Boetti, Giorgio Griffa , Vincenzo Agnetti , Luigi Ontani , Giulio Paolini , Mario Schifano , Renato Mambor and Ugo Nespolo .
Gianfranco Baruchello | Market & Quotations
Gianfranco Baruchello's works are generally difficult to find for sale on the market. Always present in the most important national Contemporary Art fairs such as Miart and international exhibitions among which Art Basel stands out. The Massimo De Carlo gallery (with offices in Milan, Paris, London, Beijing and Hong Kong) is the leading one representing the artist.
The most sought-after works by Gianfranco Baruchello are those from the 1960s and 1970s.
The auction results of recent years are constantly growing and the current record price is $95,000 for the work Oncle Dugongo et le général Sigmund, sold in 2018 at Il Ponte Casa D'aste, Milan.
Gianfranco Baruchello is certainly one of the most important contemporary Italian artists, recognized in Italy and abroad. This is why his works are exhibited and sought after by a vast international audience.
The main market is certainly the Italian one, but he is also very much in the sights of English, American and French collectors.
Gianfranco Baruchello | In the museums
His works are in the most important international museums:
UNITED STATES
- Guggenheim Museum, New York
- Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
- Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington
ITALY
- National Gallery of Modern Art (GNAM), Rome;
- MAXXI, Rome
- MADRE Museum, Naples
- MAGA Museum, Gallarte
- Gallery of Modern Art of Bologna (GAM), Bologna
- G. Fattori Museum, Livorno
SWITZERLAND
- Migros Museum, Zurich
- Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts, Lausanne
FRANCE
- Center Georges Pompidou, Paris
- Institut d'art contemporain Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes (IAC), Villeurbanne
- FRAC - Fonds Regional d'Art Contemporain, Rhône-Alpes
GERMANY
- Deichtorhallen, Hamburg
- Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (ZKM), Karlsruhe
- Collection of Werkraum Buchholz, Denklingen
MACEDONIA
- Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje, Skopje