Influenced by Dada and Surrealism, Baldessari used text, photography, and found images to explore ideas over aesthetics. He burned his early paintings in the Cremation Project, then created conceptual works based on rules and chance, such as Wrong. His later work combined film stills and painted interventions to create ironic, fragmented compositions.
John Baldessari (1931–2020) was born in National City. He studied at San Diego State College and the University of California, Los Angeles. A key figure in Conceptual Art, he exhibited widely, with retrospectives at the Tate Modern and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and received the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale.
