In 1953, together with Asger Jorn, he founded the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, in polemic with the Ulm School of Max Bill; in 1954 the two artists created the International Ceramics Meetings in Albissola Marina at the Mazzotti Ceramics, which were attended by Lucio Fontana, Emilio Scanavino, Karel Appel, Guillaume Corneille, Roberto Matta, Aligi Sassu, Édouard Jaguer.
In the fifties, Enrico Baj collaborated with the avant-garde magazines Il Gesto, Boa and Phases. Over the years, his passion for writing increased, leading him to publish numerous books, including Pataphysics, Automythobiography, Let's Learn Painting, Fantasy and Reality with Guttuso, Ecology of Art.
In 1957, Enrico Baj signed the manifesto Against Style and held his first solo exhibition abroad, at the Gallery One in London. In 1959 he adhered to the Manifeste de Naples.
In 1962 he participated in the exhibition The Art of Assemblage in New York, during which he met Duchamp.
Between 1963 and 1966 he spent much time in Paris, where he joined the Collège de Pataphysique. In 1964 he obtained a personal room at the Venice Biennale and in the same year exhibited at the Milan Triennale.
Enrico Baj develops and composes his artworks with extremely particular and unusual materials, such as wood, fabrics, plastic or even hydraulic pipes. The choice behind the use of these materials is justified by the fact that the artist himself believes they represent the new world in which we live. In fact, Enrico Baj usually represents his works as a mirror of a distorted reality, totally different from what is usually seen, because humanity has lost its form, becoming a slave to appearance and technology. In his artworks, the artist uses different techniques, experimenting with dripping, collage, marquetry or even veneering.
Among his most famous artworks that have marked the history of contemporary art, we remember the series of Generals which grotesquely represent generals in service uniform. Enrico Baj's interest in this subject arises precisely from the fact that the artist fully experienced the period of the Second World War, observing the destruction of the sense of humanity in its fullest form.
The Funeral of the Anarchist Pinelli is a huge intaglio artwork, measuring 3 meters high and 12 meters long. Inside the composition, there are 18 figures carved by the artist, including Pinelli, who is praised by the characters on the right side and practically lynched by the characters, always in military uniform and with monstrous features, on his left. This work represents the interest that Enrico Baj has always had in the field of public justice, an opinion that has often led him to ideologically side with the revolutionaries, who want to change the world in favor of a sense of humanity stronger than the current one.
The series of sculptures of the Plastic Ties represents one of the symbols of modern social status, the ties themselves, made of a material that now invades the entire modern world. It is a collection of works with a strong connotation of social criticism.
Also Mannequins, together with Epater le robot, represent a very strong message of social criticism, in which Enrico Baj discusses a society now totally lost in the process of infinite progress, of which it is increasingly a slave and less a master.
In the Tribal Masks we find instead Enrico Baj's warning to Western society at the end of the twentieth century, which has lost any sense of psycho-cultural evolution, to return, humanly speaking, to the primitive stage. It is all obviously an oxymoron against rampant progressivism, criticized by the artist in practically all his artworks.
Enrico Baj died in Vergiate in the province of Varese in 2003.