"Guardare in Alto (Aspramente)"

VINICIO BERTI

Vinicio Berti was born in Florence in 1921. He made his debut in the early 1940s with works of a realistic-expressionist nature, which in their approach to the popular world and the dramatic reality of war expressed a categorical break with the Florentine painting tradition, especially post-Rosaic. In 1945, together with Brunetti, Farulli, Nativi and the poet Caverni, he founded the newspaper "Torrente", which expressed the rejection of an intimist vision of art in the name of a direct participation in the tensions of contemporary reality. Berti was one of the protagonists of the 'Arte d'oggi' movement, which for some years brought together the main Italian and foreign artists of the time under the banner of a common innovative conviction, organising three major exhibitions in Florence from 1947 to 1949. After an initial period of reinterpretation of Cubism and Futurism (1945/1947), he continued along the path of the historical avant-garde (in particular along the lines of Mondrian, Malevic and Magnelli), inserting himself forcefully into the general renewal of European artistic culture. Thus, with works such as Vertical Composition or Symbol, he arrived at what he himself called "a new classicism", in opposition to all the classical traditions still present in contemporary art, together with other Tuscan painters close to him in terms of training, ideas and aesthetic convictions. Together with Bruno Brunetti, Alvaro Monnini, Gualtiero Nativi and Mario Nuti, he founded the "Astrattismo Classico" group, which was to be followed by various collective exhibitions and which, at the end of the albeit brief season of the '47/'50 group, would bring together their aesthetic and cultural positions in a Manifesto: the group proposed to start a new cycle of contemporary art with the end of the destruction of form initiated by Wols and Fautrier in order to re-propose, through a language anchored in history capable of representing the times, a rational and constructive narration on the thread of an internal vision of matter. When the group was disbanded, Berti continued to develop and expand the expressive possibilities of Classical Abstractionism in content and form. The rigorous structure of a classical geometry, expressed between 1947 and 1950, continued to sustain the works of those years, from the cycle of Hostile Citadels (1955-56), preceded in the phase that Berti himself defined as Expansion of Classical Abstractionism (1951-55), characterised by a freer writing and greater evidence of the connections between lines and planes of colour. This was followed by the cycles of Brecce nel tempo (1955-58) and Avventuroso astrale (1959-65), inspired by the first spatial exploits with the important work of 1963 - Utopia del tempo H3, winner of the Il Fiorino prize - emblematic of Berti's entire conception of man aware of his immense expansive capacities. From 1966 onwards it was the turn of Cittadelle di resistenza, Partenza zero, Geometria volumetrica, Realtà antagonista, up to Dal basso in alto (1981), prelude to the more recent Visioni verso l'alto, which represent the extreme phase of the development of classical abstraction with respect to the incessant becoming of reality as seen by contemporary art. He died in Florence in 199 and is still remembered today as one of the main exponents of abstractionism in the Italian and European panorama of the 20th century.