From 1953 onward, the chemist Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio focussed himself entirely on art.
His knowledge of chemistry and industrial techniques on the one hand, combined with
his curiosity about various materials and techniques on the other, resulted in exciting
experiments and surprising results of which his so-called industrial painting is the most well
known example. Experimenting was Pinot Gallizio’s primary focus; or, as the art historian
Frances Stracey describes it ‘In this collapse of the division of labour between artist and
scientist, Gallizio emerged as a sort of modern-day alchemist’ (Stracey 2005, p. 397).
In 1955 he had a crucial meeting with the former Cobra artist Danish Asger Jorn, who had
settled in Italy a few years after the dissolution of Cobra, not very far from Pinot Gallizzio's
address in Alba. Jorn had already founded a new movement in 1953: Le Mouvement
Internationale pour un Bauhaus Imaginiste (M.I.B.I.) that was aimed against the revived
Bauhaus movement of Germany. Jorn considered this “Neue” Bauhaus to be too rigid,
too functional and above all, too unimaginative. The meeting with Jorn proved extremely
stimulating for Gallizio's further artistic development. Thus inspired, he founded his
“Laboratorio” where, together with other artists, he experimented with all kinds of materials
and techniques. Many artists found their way to his experimental laboratory in Alba, including
former Cobra artists and the likes of Enrico Baj, Ettore Sottsass and Elena Verrone. Collectively
they produced a vast quantity of abstract-gestural paintings sometimes several meters in
length in which they combined industrial and organic materials such as sand, oil paint, resins,
metal filings, feathers, and egg shells.
In 1956, Pinot Gallizio, together with Jorn, organized a congress for the liberal arts and
industrial activity (First World Congress of Free Artists) which attracted artists from all over
the world. Holland was represented by Constant. In 1957 M.I.B.I. was renamed “Situationist
International,” with Pinot Gallizio as an influential member.
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