Biography of Gianni Bertini

Gianni Bertini was born in Pisa in 1922. He will produce an abstract work from 1947. He moved to Milan in 1950. The works he presented the following year in Florence (Galleria Numero), constitute the first manifestation of informal art in Italy; they are known as "nuclear art". The artist moved to Paris where his first solo exhibition was held at the Galerie Arnaud in 1952.  The artist participated in the Salon de Mai from 1954. In 1957, he joined the group "Espaces Imaginaires" initiated by Pierre Restany. His work was exxhibited throughout Europe (Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, etc.), then in the United States (Chicago). An important retrospective was organized at the Konsthall in Lund (Sweden) in 1961, which was repeated at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Gianni Bertini is close to the New Realism. From the "appropriation" of the emblems (photo, etc.), the artist passes to the photographic report on emulsified canvas and, in 1965, he signs the first manifesto of the Mec'art. Thereafter his work will continue in this way. He returned to Italy in 1970 (Milan), where he founded two magazines of visual poetry ("Mec" and "Lotta poetica"). In 1984, a major retrospective exhibition was held in Paris at the Centre national des arts plastiques. Gianni Bertini died in Caen in 2010; he was buried in Pisa.