My world
Ten years, ten years of daily life are important: they tell of a growth that, after a certain age, no longer concerns the body but the intellectual dimension. At least I hope so...
Ten years, of an artist’s life, are just as important.
A dear friend of mine, Adelina Rodolico Gariglio, a while ago was telling me that every ten years an artist evolves and after the age of forty, he gives the best of himself.
In this volume are collected 74 works that talk about my painting from the end of 2009 to the present day. The monograph is also dedicated to all those friends who have followed my work during these years and have commented on my works; I feel I must express all my esteem and gratitude to them.
A special thanks goes to Dr. Cinzia Tesio. By analyzing my works and my painting she was able to understand my personality, my thoughts and my dreams.
There was a moment in 2009 when, after almost a decade of oil painting characterized by the use of the palette knife, I realized that I was not satisfied with the results; while on the one hand the spatula allows you to obtain bright colours, on the other it prevents you from representing details that, the brush instead allows you to obtain. Not that I'm a meticulous draftsman, quite the opposite: looking closely at my work you can see that I don't particularly care for details. But I felt the need to go back to the brush and look for new solutions.
Finally, recently, I have discovered the pleasure of blending colours using solvent, so much so as to confuse the observer causing him to wonder if they are not watercolours.
The need to represent my world on an abstract level, dates back to when I was a child. It has always been an obsession; years and years of trials, which are not yet over. I don't like to reproduce realistically what I see. A Venice of mine, compared with a photo of the place, could disappoint those who know it well. I often let myself be guided by the creative process: a window here or there, a chimney that is not present in reality, an extra pole. Symbols, iconic elements that create a short-circuit to the idea of the place. My painting is like this, improvisation and symbolism. Disrupting reality doesn't matter to me as I try to achieve my goal.
The result is a somewhat abstract world made up of planes that cut space horizontally or vertically, of alternations between overlapping and dissecting the perspective, of spots and shades of colour.
This is my world.
Alex Bertaina
A CONCRETE AND EXPRESSIVE ART
Alex Bertaina is an artist who describes reality with fragrant accents of poetry, sometimes with idyllic abandon, sometimes with a lively impulse. A delicate and, at the same time, energetic artist who has the gift of happily discovering various aspects of nature, historical and everyday landscapes, in a call of intimate, clear concentration of psychological atmospheres. They are light and gentle images, which nevertheless always find their consistency in a mixture that is as moving as it is tenacious and compact. To interpret his work we can look for some keywords: life, energy and research. His works, in fact, cannot be catalogued in a delimited region, enclosed in forced rhythms, delegated to a separate concept of living, of everyday life, of acting.
His path – although linked to the figurative world - is the ensemble of a concrete and expressive flow, as if it were tracing the modules and forms of energy within the specific function of the concept. His technical expertise is concrete, as his ability to limit spaces and veils; his inner elaboration of themes is exspressive which he researches and studies throughout a great expansion.
Every concept, even the most immediate, is investigated and the support becomes the space where everything begins. Therefore, figurativism for the master is not only the point of view of man facing nature in its entirety; he penetrates nature, poetry, history, perceives its ravines, details, objects, gets confused and often almost unifies, he follows its forms.
Nature engages with man a confrontation, which can also be proposed in ironic terms, almost of gigantism for the use of industrial and artificial man. This ability to penetrate is very evident in Bertaina's works.
Whoever decides to get closer to his art discovers then his feelings of sincerity, serenity and his joy of living. All permeated with a consoling hope, the one of always being able to admire and praise all the elements that give life to life. He paints with the commitment of a man who knows how to take everything seriously: the colour combinations, the perspective, the poetic atmosphere, the light. Consciously or unconsciously he recalls names and past rhythms, but in front of the immaculate canvas there is only him, the painter of the things of the world, always willing to interpret and express the wonderful world that belongs to him.
He recalls but does not copy anyone: he studies and asks for inspiration from the truth. He gives frankness to his painting: he wants, as he declares, to "sing" what he feels inside. Not simple technical exercises, but balances of cuts, planes, depths that characterize each one of his paintings.
With his pictorial "journeys" Bertaina feels happy. And he is not wrong, because his painting thanks to the thematic choice, has qualities to please, the sobriety in the detail, the careful research for tones and the often achieved effects, of airiness and light.
In front of his paintings, conversation between the Artist and the public is not always easy and simple, the instinctive function has a moment of estrangement, but the aesthetic and emotional satisfaction immediately becomes certain.
Therefore, an unjustified label linked to instinct alone or to freely work with pindaric paths should not be attributed to the master from Cuneo: even the love of technique for technique, of the craft as an end in itself becomes introspection and a specific language. An absolute and undisputed technical skill emerges: the brush caresses the surfaces with unexpected glazes to become, when necessary, a robust underliner of a pseudo-material reshuffle that sculpts shadows and lights and creates three-dimensionality of the surfaces.
In summary I can affirm that Bertaina's painting is characterized by an anxious, yet concise, extremely concise and variant form, with an immediate yet absorbed touch that, throughout its journey, always maintains its recognizable freshness and truth.
Cinzia Tesio, Cherasco (CN), Italy
