A book dedicated to the last drawings created between 2021 and 2022 by Gianfranco Baruchello, who passed away in January 2023.
A selection of around 200 works on paper bears witness to the activity, gestures, and increasingly rarefied marks of the artist, who had reached what he himself described as the "great old age" of his life.
Edited by
Andrea Bellini and
Hans Ulrich Obrist, the book contains a conversation between the two curators, in which they recount their encounter with the work of the great Italian artist and analyze the drawings collected in the volume. An essay by Carla Subrizi provides a philosophical and poetic framework for Baruchello's latest work, contextualizing it within his long and highly diverse practice and offering some general reflections on the art created by great artists in the last phase of their lives. A conversation between Baruchello and Subrizi, annotated by the latter and taking place between 2021 and 2022, reveals some clues about the genesis of these drawings, while also offering some insights for engaging with the work.
A sequence of drawings, mostly in black and white, opens the publication—conceived as an artist's book—allowing the reader to follow the rarefaction of the image, immersing them in the flow of forms that from articulated systems become jagged lines, sometimes accompanied by brief annotations that seem to define both the path of the sign and that of existence.
Gianfranco Baruchello (1924-2023) was one of the main representatives of the Italian conceptual art. He created the Agricola Cornelia in Rome in 1973. His practice as an artist, poet,
videographer and
experimental filmmaker is now being rediscovered thanks to a series of exhibitions, and participation in Biennials and group exhibitions, as well as publications.
