signed and dated 'Pinot 61.' (on the reverse)

oil on canvas, 91x72 cm

This artwork is registered as no. 61DT42 and published in the general catalogue of Pinot Gallizio.

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.