Non uccidete i bambini, 1953

About the Work

Lost and with arms spread wide open, vainly seeking support, an infant hovers before a gloomy black background. The figure seems to originate from a dark utopia in which the world has become a hostile space. This early work by Enrico Baj is a paradigmatic example of the art of the Italian 'Arte nucleare' movement, which Baj co-founded with Piero Manzoni and Sergio Dangelo. In deliberate contrast to Geometric Abstraction, the 'Nuclears', who were similar in character to the CoBrA artists, strove to establish an abstract art which would translate figurative representations into an informal language of shapes. In this way they attempted - by bringing about the dissolution of the figure - to capture aesthetically the socio-political effects of the atomic age.