ANNA BERTONI
“Memory before representation”
from 13 to 28 January 2024
The Exhibition
We owe to Raffaele De Grada the title of this exhibition by Anna Bertoni, “Memory before representation”With these words, in fact, in a 1971 essay De Grada described her painting, at times melancholy and imbued with a sweet nostalgia which takes the observer by the throat like a memory. Considering the production of those years and the temperas and oils that, over time, were generously added, this expression continues to remain profoundly true because what deserved to be represented belongs to the sphere of the sincerest feelings.
Over the decades, Bertoni's painting has remained anchored to the most beloved themes - the plants in the garden, first and foremost, or the graceful beauty of a female body, delicate and sensual like a flower - and she has continued to investigate them, with passionate and indomitable obstinacy. Interweaving and stratifications of predominantly cold lines and colors, these are in fact the ones that Bertoni favors, have given life to new scenarios which the spectator is asked to linger on, and in which he can even get lost, and it matters little if her wandering of the gaze is moved by the desire to follow the unpredictable drips of tempera on the paper, the tangled brushstrokes or the large and free backgrounds of the background.
Bertoni's gardens are spaces of memory, intimate places, tenaciously desired, inhabited. Starting from that of her own home, contemplated with passionate eyes, and which over time has become a source of countless ideas for her painting.
The Artist
Anna Bertoni works and lives in Ravenna. She has been present in many exhibitions for several years, has won awards and is highly appreciated by critics and the public.
Bertoni's large tempera paintings and her oil paintings, which come from a more careful study, bring us back to that opacity of feeling which makes the painting a memory before a representation, which takes us by the throat like a memory before a representation. The art critic Raffaele De Grada believed that Anna Bertoni had crossed the uncertain border between pleasure in painting and the need to communicate. In the field of art she has successfully overcome the conflict between poetic reasons and a feeling of history, in the original arrangement of the various personalities to mark time with her work.
