Stefan Bertalan Mein Geist, 1981

Ştefan Bertalan has a singular voice within the Romanian avant-garde as the main figure of research-based, process-oriented, and innovation-driven art. He looms large in the history of Romanian contemporary art, having cofounded the first experimental art collective in the country, 111, and the progressive transdisciplinary collective Sigma. However, he never fit neatly into the Ceaușescu regime’s vision of a productive socialist artist and was quickly identified as a dissident for his volatility and vocal criticism of the communist dictatorship. The weight of surveillance and beatings caused a psychological break within him as well as a formalist break with neo-constructivism to pursue ecological mysticism.

Ştefan Bertalan worked in many media, producing drawings, photographs, installations, actions, environments, and happenings, often with innovative materials such as plastics, natural and synthetic fibers, X-ray photos, and aluminum. However, nearly ninety percent of his output are works on paper. In these works, one sees both the shimmering dream of finding order and meaning, and the dense palimpsests of an artist forever reworking his own oeuvre. This work seems to reflect some of the artist’s early outdoor installations.