BRUSSELS.- John Baldessari (California, 1931–2020) was a giant of contemporary art, whose codes turned artistic conventions upside down. Baldessari wittily combined text, photography, and painting to challenge the traditional boundaries of art. He was a master of appropriation and collage, drawing on popular culture — frequently from films, television, press clippings, and other appropriated images — to create a new visual language that was irreverent and playful.
From 19 September 2025 to 1 February 2026, Bozar presents the first major European exhibition dedicated to his work since his death in 2020. Occupying the 1,000 m2 of the Ravenstein galleries in the Centre for Fine Arts of Brussels, the exhibition features over 60 works, many of them monumental. Photographs, paintings, installations, videos, and wallpaper will be on display, some for the very first time in Europe.
The exhibition is a lively and joyful immersion in the work of a key artist of the late 20th century, which also questions our relationship with images and language today.
The exhibition brings together works from public and private collections across Europe and the United States, including important loans of the Craig Robins Collection. The three curators of the exhibition—Rita McBride, David Platzker, and Bartomeu Marí—all have a long and deep relationship with John Baldessari. Their individual experiences with the artist, spanning over 40 years, offer unique and complementary perspectives on his work.
“The exhibition is not intended to be exhaustive, but it represents the most relevant moments in John Baldessari's career,” explains Bartomeu Marí. The exhibition Parables, Fables, and Other Tall Tales was conceived, as the title suggests, in tune with Baldessari's spirit. As David Platzker points out: “John was, above all, a storyteller. Both in his art, and in person, he looked at telling stories as a means of conveying experiences, knowledge, and relaying information to his students and friends.” Rita McBride adds: “The approach to the exhibition is immersive, not linear or chronological but entirely experiential.”
John Baldessari was a master of reinvention. In the early 1960s, he stopped making representational and abstract paintings to pursue new artistic forms: videos, photography, prints, sculpture, text-based art, artist’s books, installations, and paintings, but most of all hybrid forms using a combination of media in singular works.
While this show includes work from Baldessari’s early practice of the 1960s and 1970s, the exhibition focuses on the artist’s mature period: the 1980s to the 2000s. During this time, Baldessari explored forms and formats beyond the conventions of the white cube and the printed page that had dominated his previous work.
Steeped in film and photographic culture, Baldessari was a pioneer of image appropriation and collage, long before the advent of computer-assisted image editing. The exhibition explores and illustrates the impact of his work, as well as its relevance for generations born in the digital age.
Baldessari & Brussels
John Baldessari gained early recognition not in the United States, but in Europe. He had a particular connection to Brussels, where he had three important solo exhibitions at Galerie MTL between 1972 and 1974. Later, he would show frequently with Galerie Meert Rihoux, starting in 1989. He continued to work for many decades with the gallery when it was renamed Galerie Greta Meert in 2006, taking part in several exhibitions there up until his passing in 2020.
David Platzker recalls that Baldessari “found affinity with the works of Marcel Broodthaers, and René Magritte, both of whose works would frequently be presented in concert with his art.” Rita McBride adds that “the strong Belgian sense of humour resonated with him.”
In 1988, the show John Baldessari: Recent Works, was presented at the Centre for Fine Arts of Brussels. “I have no doubt John would see this show as a sort of ‘homecoming’ in a city he was truly fond of,” says Platzker.
