Introduction
Stefan Bertalan was a pivotal figure in the history of post-war Romanian art. His activities in the 1960s and 1970s—as founder of the influential avant-garde groups 111 (1966-1969) and Sigma (1970-1978)—gained international recognition. Yet, despite a surge of interest in the years preceding his death in 2014, fueled by a small number of artists and art historians Bertalan had allowed entry to his studio, his remarkable later bodies of work remain largely unknown.
A driving force of the Romanian neo-constructivist avant-garde, Stefan Bertalan’s research into cybernetics and system theory informed his search for overarching patterns and systems in natural forms. Close observation of organic processes and systematic studies of shapes found in organic, vegetal, and mineral forms eventually led to the artist’s development of an interconnected cosmology of all things, constituting Bertalan’s search for a "total science" in which knowledge would be integrated into an ensemble of ethical and spiritual principles.
GEOMETRY
Bertalan's early geometric drawings, realized in thin light lines on black cardboard, are influenced by the artist group 111's research of constructivist and Bauhaus artists, as well as the work and writings of Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Victor Vasarely. The contrast creates the impression of three-dimensionality which also suggests the increasing influence of kinetic art.
111 (or 1+1+1) was a kinetic constructivist artist group active in 1966 - 1969 in Timişoara. Its members-Bertalan, Roman Cotoşman, and Constantin Flondor-engaged in an intense exchange of ideas but produced work individually as well. Based on their engagement with the art and the writings of artists such as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky whose approach included formal and somewhat mystical ideas, and influenced by the formation of other neo-avant-garde groups throughout Europe, the group continuously engaged in an intense research process.
When, after their participation at the Nürnberg Biennial in 1969, Cotoşman remained in Germany, the group dissolved and shortly after Bertalan and Flondor founded a new experimental group, called Sigma. Drawing on the example of the German Bauhaus school, Sigma focused on interdisciplinary research and team work, collectively producing large-scale experimental installations. First to exhibit a multi-media installation, Sigma also first introduced the notion of process-based art into the Romanian context.
After an innovative teaching experience at the Fine Art High School in Timişoara, where, together with the group called Sigma, Bertalan applied a teaching method somewhat lnspired by Bauhaus, in 1971, Bertalan was transferred to the Polytechnical Institute of Timişoara, the location of the School of Architecture, part of the Faculty of Civil Engineering. In this new context, he taught a course on the "Study and Structure of Form", which also included designing classes focused on an experimental design. (Ileana Pintilie)
THE ORGANIC ELEMENT
Close observation of organic processes and systematic studies of shapes found in organic, vegetal, and mineral forms eventually led to the artist's development of an interconnected cosmology of all things, represented in this series by the interacting forms of landscape, vegetal pattern, and atomic structure.
Bertalan's interest in plants surfaced in the almost inexhaustible morphology of leaves, efflorescences and seed capsules, in which the macromolecular networks in the structure of leaves or stems are drawn. The forms of the vegetal world were a source of research and inspiration for him, as he followed their incessantly pulsating vital process. Proof of this interest lies in his numerous study-drawings, and foremost in the drawing which represents the manner in which sunflower seeds are inserted in the disk of the efflorescence, or the aluminum disks based on the pattern of seeds that are about to come forth from the capsule of the fruit, which he photographed together with the vegetal models that inspired him. (Ileana Pintilie)
APPARITION
The metamorphosis of a potato which begins to germinate produces an essential, expressive change in its outer appearance: the peel is wrinkled, like the expression lines on a human face. Unlike other plants researched for the sake of their inner structures which recall the regular form of geometry, or for their ingenious capacity of adaptation, the potato had associations with the human figure and even the human destiny, as subject to decadence and physical degradation. His photographic studies were the basis for some dramatic drawings in his series of self-portraits, drawn in the immediately following years, in the period before his emigration. (Ileana Pintilie)
Initiated by a series of intense dreams, to which the artist referred as apparitions, Bertalan began a series of emotionally charged drawings that insert the artist's body into those of plants, creating hybrid formations. As Erwin Kessler notes "with the apparitions series, the decisive leap was made by Bertalan from enthusiastic, clean-scientific research of the vegetal world, backed by systematic, theoretical and analytical methodology, toward a markedly esoteric insertion into the world of mysterious, all-pervading relationships working as a sacrificial allegory of one's own being." (Erwin Kessler, Inner Emigration, p. 50)
For Bertalan, drawing—which constitutes about ninety percent of his surviving œuvre—was a research tool, fusing scientific method and artistic imagination. His entire practice developed from studies of geometric structures and detailed observations of plant and animal life, but was deeply informed by post-World War II sciences: information and communication theory, cybernetics, mathematics, semiotics and, later, fractal geometry.
While the time of 111 and Sigma coincided with a relative easing of political tension, beginning in the late 1970s Romania underwent a period of austerity and political repression. In this period, having earlier applied to emigrate to West Germany, Bertalan lost his teaching position and in 1981 had to relocate to the provincial home of his wife's family in Sibiu, where the artist became increasingly isolated. The real and the imagined surveillance by Romania's secret police—the infamous Securitate—precipitated what art historian Erwin Kessler
has called the artist’s "inner emigration."
The loss of his artistic context and the isolation of the new environment intensified Bertalan's retreat into observation of the natural world and even into an identification with nature. Initiated by a series of intense dreams, to which the artist referred as "apparitions," Bertalan began a series of emotionally charged drawings that insert the artist's body into those of plants, creating hybrid formations.
Combining rigorous observation and fantastic imagination Bertalan's extraordinary drawings create mysterious microcosms. Imbued with the artist's philosophical and spiritual convictions, they offer a concentrated, timeless view into the power of the imagination.
