GiANFrANCO BArUCHELLO
(Livorno, 1924)
One of the major exponents of Italian Conceptual Art, Baruchello's artistic research has never been influenced by the trends of the years in which he has operated. Born in Livorno in 1924, he studied law at La Sapienza University of Rome, working for ten years in his family’s biomedical company. However, attracted by the world of culture, he began to outline his artistic personality by deciding to abandon this career and devoting himself completely to that of an artist. His research consisted in the continuous confrontation with the everyday, the common, the anti-monumental: a human dimension of existence in which to rediscover the deep value of an encyclopedic knowledge. His production started with series of paintings such as Other Traces, white canvases crossed by a tangle of black lines, and series of objects assembled with found materials. In 1963, the year of his first film, The Zero Degree of the Landscape, he held his first solo exhibition at La Tartaruga Gallery in Rome presented by Alain Jouffroy: signs, letters and drawings were the elements of a miniature painting made on large white surfaces, his typical conceptual maps with references to a range of symbols from consumerism to comunication media. From 1973 he moved to the countryside and started the artistic operation Agricola Cornelia SpA, a farm-company settled in a land he purchased in Via di Santa Cornelia, on the outskirts of Rome, made "with the social purpose of growing the earth". In these years he has developed works about the themes of home and living. In 1998 the Baruchello Foundation was founded, with the aim of carrying out research activity on Contemporary Art.
Among his solo and group exhibition we can mention: The New Realists (Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, 1962); Baruchello (Galleria La Tartaruga, Roma, 1963); Gianfranco Baruchello (Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, New York, 1964); Pop Art Italia 1958-1968 (Galleria Civica, Modena, 2005), Gianfranco Baruchello (Hasenclever Gallery, Monaco, 2005); Gianfranco Baruchello (Galleria Greta Meert, Bruxelles, 2006); The Collection: selected works (MACRO, Rome, 2006); Time & Place - Milano - Torino 1958-1968 (Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2008); La formule (Michael Janssen Gallery, Berlin, 2009); Certe idee (GNAM - Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, 2011); If Arte Povera Was Pop: Artists' and Experimental Cinema in Italy 1960s - 70s (Tate Modern, London, 2015); Gianfranco Baruchello (MART, Rovereto, 2021); Vita Nuova - nouveaux enjeux de l'art en italia 1960-1975 (Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain, Nice, 2022).
