Bertini

Artist: Gianni Bertini 
Author: Jean Dypreau 
Publisher: Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels 
Date: 1963 
Condition: Printed photographic card covers with French flaps, minor handling marks and mild tanning to the edges; internally good and clean, text in French and illustrated in black and white throughout 

I'm not ashamed to admit that Gianni Bertini was a new one for me but when I saw this catalogue for an exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, it was clear that he was worth looking into. 

Born in Pisa in 1922, he lived until 2010 and was part of the generation of Italian artists who, in the years after WWII, began to reconstruct contemporary art in their country, often through abstraction and the use of informal and non-art materials. He was in Paris for much of the 1950s and then travelled further afield. 

This catalogue, from 1963, was for a form of retrospective, although the catalogue includes a good deal of dada-type textual art and drawings. However, he certainly seemed to keep working away through the following decades so I will be keeping an eye open now for works by Gianni Bertini!