The Cries |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Cries - I Gridi Leo Castelli can be well satisfied with Gianni Bertini's “Historic Cries”, painted during the period 1948-49 – indeed, doubly satisfied and well served, because, after a decade, he will be promoting, in New York, the most fabulous profit-making launch in the whole history of art: that of American Pop Art”, Mikos N. Varga wrote in “Gala” in December 1974. Indeed, if one looks at the pictures entitled “Tre”, “Sette”, and “Halt”, painted in 1949, one cannot help noticing surprising similarities to work by Jasper Johns or Robert Indiana. Other works of the same period, however, caught up in a rotation movement (“Luce”, “Rotore”, “Nord-Sud”, “Luna, Nord-Sud”, “Solo” etc.) have distant roots in futurism and dadaism, ready to take off into the nuclear age. In fact, the inscriptions here hinged no so much on pictorial values, being, rather, false description and phenomenal provocation. A third distinction, which had launched the “I Gridi” process, may be identified in certain works characterized by free lines in an informalist landscape, or held within a vaguely geometrical rapport (“Carnevale” and “Grido”). Two of these works, “Carnevale” and “Grido Grosso”, had appeared under the titles of “Astrazione No.1” and “Astrazione No.2”, at the large “Arte d'oggi” exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence in June 1949. They were not too well received, and were even mocked by painter friends. One of the latter, Gualtiero Nativi, was to recall in January 1980: “I must admit that the two pictures... left us somewhat perplexed: our geometrical discipline, the will to eliminate any unresolved problems had been handed down to us as a tradition to Italian painting, with the certainty of being able to ![]() Extract from Luciano Caprile, Bertini. Works 1948-1993, Contemporary Art Museum. L'Agrifoglio editions, Milano
|