Farewell to John Baldessari, one of the greatest U.S. artists

The great U.S. artist John Baldessari has passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 88.The death occurred on January 2, but the news was only released in the last few hours. Baldessari, born on June 17, 1931, in National City, California, to an Italian father, Antonio Baldessari, and a Danish mother, Hedvig Jensen, was one of the most influential artists on the American and world scene from the 1970s onward, and is best known for his works combining images and words. After studying at San Diego State College, Baldessari taught art for several years in San Diego schools and, beginning in 1966, began producing his works that combined photography with the use of words.

A turning point in Baldessari’s career was 1970, when the artist and five friends decided to burn all of his paintings created between 1953 and 1966 as part of a work entitled The Cremation Project: the ashes of the works were baked into cookies placed inside urns with memorial plaques commemorating the destroyed works that were accompanied by recipes for baking the cookies. With this work of his, Baldessari intended to symbolically affirm the disavowal of what had been done before, and to abandon painting alone. From that moment on, Baldessari in fact continued to experiment continuously by combining different techniques (painting, photography, poetry, performance, sculpture) and developing aconceptual art that drew on René Magritte and Marcel Duchamp.

During his long career, Baldessari has exhibited in shows and museums around the world: more than two hundred solo exhibitions and more than a thousand group shows. He has taken part twice in Documenta (in 1972 and 1982), once in the Venice Biennale (in 1997), and once in the Whitney Biennial (1983), and his exhibitions have been held at the Metropolitan and Whitney Museums in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts, MOCA and LACMA in Los Angeles, the Albertina in Vienna, and the Mart in Rovereto. At the 2009 Venice Biennale he was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

Pictured: John Baldessari in Venice in 2009. Ph. Credit Frédéric de Goldschmidt

Farewell to John Baldessari, one of the greatest U.S. artists

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