Artists

Gianfranco Baruchello

Press release

As part of its ongoing series of monographic exhibitions dedicated to the Daniel Cordier Collection, Galerie Christophe Gaillard presents a remarkable selection of works on paper, along with two large canvases by Gianfranco Baruchello.

Gianfranco Baruchello (1924-2023) was an Italian conceptual artist - painter, poet, and filmmaker. After studying law, earning a doctorate in economics, and pursuing an industrial career until 1959, he devoted himself entirely to art, particularly painting. Moving to Paris in the early 1960s, he became immersed in avant-garde artistic circles, rubbing shoulders with painter Roberto Matta and critics Alain Jouffroy, Robert Lebel, and Pierre Restany. During this period, he participated in various collective exhibitions and artistic events.

Baruchello created these works between May and August 1963, in the weeks following his very first solo exhibition in Rome (Galerie La Tartaruga, May 1963) and just before meeting Daniel Cordier in Paris in September. A year later, the dealer and collector introduced Baruchello’s work to the United States for the first time, exhibiting it at his New York gallery, Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, with an introductory text by renowned American art historian Dore Ashton.