Stefan Bertalan, Untitled, 1981

Stefan Bertalan Untitled, 1981

Red chalk, pencil and watercolor on paper

33 x 48 cm (unframed)
53,6 x 68,6 x 4,2 cm (framed)
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A delicately rendered landscape is seen behind the large tree that dominated the foreground of the square area delineated on the sheet. Executed in red chalk, pencil and watercolor, sections of the try trunk are deliberately smudged creating a deep color and almost physical presence.

Bertalan was monitored by the Communist regime throughout the 1980s, and could no longer keep together utopian views and concrete, widespread misgivings. He lost control. Nature as a system and science as a duty were shattered ideals in those times of chaotic regression, authoritarianism, suspicion, betrayal and repression. Bertalan’s rigorous networks were torn apart: their luminous, rational structure gradually melt away. His abstract grids turn shabby, ragged by doubts and fear. Plants, geological and cosmic structures reverse into distorted, menacing self-portraits, while the animals and bodies unveil their monstrous traits. The swirling rational universe altered into disarray.

His late, confessing research papers unmask a fight against the overwhelming irrationality of a threatened being, able to resist inner and outer terror and repression.

Stefan Bertalan's research papers are filled with sketches, diagrams and complex calculations, geometric schemes, keen observations of plants, rocks, shells, insects, animals, landscapes, but also abstract structures, nightmarish monsters and violent politics.

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