Farewell to John Baldessari, pioneer of conceptual art

(ANSA) - NEW YORK, JAN 06 - One of the most famous contemporary American artists, John Baldessari, died at 88 in his Venice home in California. This was announced by the Marian Goodman gallery, which represented him, calling him an "intelligent" person and an "incomparable" artist.
Baldessari, who had created thousands of works by combining images and words and inserting a dose of humor in the conceptual art, had been awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2009 and in 2014 he had received the National Medal for Arts. Son of an Italian old man who emigrated to California and a Danish nurse, Baldessari had started his career as a half-abstract painter. In the mid 60's he had begun to experiment beyond the canvas, making films, creating collages and installations. In 1970 he had become famous taking distances from his previous production: he had burned the repudiated paintings of the period 1953-1966 in the crematorium of a funeral home in San Diego, then using the ashes to make biscuits.
"The Cremation Project" - or rather the urn containing idolcetti - was exhibited at the MoMA in New York in the "Information" exhibition, the first major exhibition of conceptual art organized in America. (HANDLE).