Antonio Berni
Encyclopedia
Delesio Antonio Berni was a figurative art
ist, born in Rosario
, province
of Santa Fe
, Argentina
. He worked as a painter, an illustrator and an engraver. His father, Napoleón Berni, was an immigrant
tailor
from Italy
. His mother, Margarita Picco, was an Argentinian, daughter of Italians settled in Roldán
, a nearby town.
In 1914, he became an apprentice in the Buxadera and Co. vitraux factory, receiving to Buenos Aires, which was attended even by President
Marcelo T. de Alvear.
In Paris, he became acquainted with a number of people, such as Louis Aragon
, a French writer and one of the leaders of Dada
and surrealism
, who influenced him artistically and introduced him to André Breton
, poet and critic. He also befriended Henri Lefebvre
, who initiated him in the reading of Karl Marx
. With the combined influence of his friends in politics, and of Giorgio de Chirico
's works and René Magritte
in the arts, he finally embraced surrealism and Communism
. He began helping Aragón in his anti-imperialist
struggle in Paris, where Chinese, African, Vietnamese and other minority people were abundant. Berni distributed a newspaper for yellow people and illustrated other publications. In the meantime, he studied surrealist painting and poetry, and the work of Sigmund Freud
. One of his illuminating moments came when he met Tristan Tzara
in 1930.
His style of surrealism does not resemble Miró
's automatism or Dalí
's onirism; he instead took Chirico's style and gave it a new content.
in Buenos Aires (see Década Infame), he decided to go back, and settled first in the countryside, and then in Rosario, where he worked in the town hall. He organized an association of artists and students, and was briefly a member of the local Communist Party.
In 1932, he exposed his surrealist paintings. It was the first display of this art movement in Latin America
, and the public was not accustomed to it; the critics condemned it. In 1932 he painted La Siesta y su Sueno.
Argentina was under the rule of a conservative dictatorship
, a problematic time full of social struggle, workers' strikes and unemployment
. Rosario was a picturesque display of decadence, prostitution
and mafia
gangs. The world as a whole was moving towards darker times, with totalitarism, the rise of Nazism
in Germany
, the Spanish Civil War
, etc. Berni felt surrealism was far removed from this, and started moving away into social realism, starting in 1934 with two paintings called Desocupados ("Unemployed people") and Manifestación ("Demonstration").
In 1945, Berni painted one of 12 frescos on the cupola of Edifício Pacífico in Florida Street
, Buenos Aires
. Today the building houses the shopping arcade Galerías Pacífico
where his work is still visible after 4 more frescos were added in 1990.
In the 1940s, Berni met and studied Pre-Columbian art during a journey through Bolivia
, Ecuador
, Peru
and Colombia
, whose influence can be felt in a painting, Mercado indígena ("Indian market"). This decade was one of revolutions and coups d'état in Latin America, including Argentina in 1943. Between 1948 and 1951 he painted Masacre ("Massacre"), El obrero muerto ("The dead worker"), and another "Demonstration", with people carrying symbols of peace, on the year of the first hydrogen bomb test by the United States
.
From 1951 to 1953, he lived in Santiago del Estero
, a province in the Argentine north-west which had suffered and was still suffering massive ecological damage, mainly overexploitation
of the quebracho tree
(for its tannin
and its hard, durable timber
) by a few landowners who exploited their workers. In the following years, Berni's works reflected this natural and social tragedy. In 1955–1956 he painted the series Chaco, depicting the similar situation in Chaco
; it was exhibited in Paris, Berlin
, Warsaw
, Bucharest
and Moscow
.
By this time, he also painted some suburban landscapes, and then he invented two stock characters that would make his works recognizable worldwide, Juanito Laguna and Ramona Montiel.
, where he painted, did engraving and collage, and exhibited some works. He painted 58 works that were meant for an exhibit in Texas
, but were never displayed there, and were recovered and brought back to Argentina after his death, in 1982. New York struck him as luxurious, consumistic, materially wealthy but spiritually poor. His works showed this with a touch of social irony
.
In 1981, his paintings became more spiritual and reflective. He painted apocalyptic murals for a chapel in General Las Heras, Buenos Aires
; a Cristo en el garage ("Christ in the garage"), and the opposition of nature and humanity through a naked woman lying in the sand under the moon, this harmonious night disturbed by the passing of an airplane. Berni died that same year, on October 13.
Figurative art
Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork—particularly paintings and sculptures—which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational.-Definition:...
ist, born in Rosario
Rosario
Rosario is the largest city in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. It is located northwest of Buenos Aires, on the western shore of the Paraná River and has 1,159,004 residents as of the ....
, province
Provinces of Argentina
Argentina is subdivided into twenty-three provinces and one autonomous city...
of Santa Fe
Santa Fe Province
The Invincible Province of Santa Fe, in Spanish Provincia Invencible de Santa Fe , is a province of Argentina, located in the center-east of the country. Neighboring provinces are from the north clockwise Chaco , Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Buenos Aires, Córdoba, and Santiago del Estero...
, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
. He worked as a painter, an illustrator and an engraver. His father, Napoleón Berni, was an immigrant
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
tailor
Tailor
A tailor is a person who makes, repairs, or alters clothing professionally, especially suits and men's clothing.Although the term dates to the thirteenth century, tailor took on its modern sense in the late eighteenth century, and now refers to makers of men's and women's suits, coats, trousers,...
from Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. His mother, Margarita Picco, was an Argentinian, daughter of Italians settled in Roldán
Roldán, Santa Fe
Roldán is a small city in the , located within the metropolitan area of Greater Rosario. According to the 2001 census, it had a population of 11,470 inhabitants...
, a nearby town.
In 1914, he became an apprentice in the Buxadera and Co. vitraux factory, receiving to Buenos Aires, which was attended even by President
President of Argentina
The President of the Argentine Nation , usually known as the President of Argentina, is the head of state of Argentina. Under the national Constitution, the President is also the chief executive of the federal government and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.Through Argentine history, the...
Marcelo T. de Alvear.
In Paris, he became acquainted with a number of people, such as Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon , was a French poet, novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt.- Early life :...
, a French writer and one of the leaders of Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
and surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, who influenced him artistically and introduced him to André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
, poet and critic. He also befriended Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre was a French sociologist, Marxist intellectual, and philosopher, best known for his work on dialectics, Marxism, everyday life, cities, and space.-Biography:...
, who initiated him in the reading of Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
. With the combined influence of his friends in politics, and of Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico was a pre-Surrealist and then Surrealist Italian painter born in Volos, Greece, to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. He founded the scuola metafisica art movement...
's works and René Magritte
René Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte[p] was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images...
in the arts, he finally embraced surrealism and Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. He began helping Aragón in his anti-imperialist
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
struggle in Paris, where Chinese, African, Vietnamese and other minority people were abundant. Berni distributed a newspaper for yellow people and illustrated other publications. In the meantime, he studied surrealist painting and poetry, and the work of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
. One of his illuminating moments came when he met Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...
in 1930.
His style of surrealism does not resemble Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
's automatism or Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
's onirism; he instead took Chirico's style and gave it a new content.
Back to Argentina: social realism
By 1930 Berni was married and had a daughter. Shocked by the news of a military coup d'étatCoup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
in Buenos Aires (see Década Infame), he decided to go back, and settled first in the countryside, and then in Rosario, where he worked in the town hall. He organized an association of artists and students, and was briefly a member of the local Communist Party.
In 1932, he exposed his surrealist paintings. It was the first display of this art movement in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
, and the public was not accustomed to it; the critics condemned it. In 1932 he painted La Siesta y su Sueno.
Argentina was under the rule of a conservative dictatorship
Dictatorship
A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator. It has three possible meanings:...
, a problematic time full of social struggle, workers' strikes and unemployment
Unemployment
Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...
. Rosario was a picturesque display of decadence, prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
and mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
gangs. The world as a whole was moving towards darker times, with totalitarism, the rise of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, etc. Berni felt surrealism was far removed from this, and started moving away into social realism, starting in 1934 with two paintings called Desocupados ("Unemployed people") and Manifestación ("Demonstration").
In 1945, Berni painted one of 12 frescos on the cupola of Edifício Pacífico in Florida Street
Florida Street
Florida Street is an elegant shopping street in Downtown Buenos Aires, Argentina. A pedestrian street since 1971, some stretches have been pedestrianized since 1913....
, Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
. Today the building houses the shopping arcade Galerías Pacífico
Galerías Pacífico
Galerías Pacífico is a shopping centre in Buenos Aires, Argentina, located at the intersection of Florida Street and Córdoba Avenue.-Overview:...
where his work is still visible after 4 more frescos were added in 1990.
In the 1940s, Berni met and studied Pre-Columbian art during a journey through Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
, Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
, Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
and Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, whose influence can be felt in a painting, Mercado indígena ("Indian market"). This decade was one of revolutions and coups d'état in Latin America, including Argentina in 1943. Between 1948 and 1951 he painted Masacre ("Massacre"), El obrero muerto ("The dead worker"), and another "Demonstration", with people carrying symbols of peace, on the year of the first hydrogen bomb test by the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
From 1951 to 1953, he lived in Santiago del Estero
Santiago del Estero Province
Santiago del Estero is a province of Argentina, located in the north of the country. Neighbouring provinces are from the north clockwise Salta, Chaco, Santa Fe, Córdoba, Catamarca and Tucumán.-History:...
, a province in the Argentine north-west which had suffered and was still suffering massive ecological damage, mainly overexploitation
Overexploitation
Overexploitation, also called overharvesting, refers to harvesting a renewable resource to the point of diminishing returns. Sustained overexploitation can lead to the destruction of the resource...
of the quebracho tree
Quebracho tree
Quebracho is a common name in Spanish to describe very hard wood tree species. The etymology of the name derived from quiebrahacha, or quebrar hacha, meaning "axe-breaker".-Species:...
(for its tannin
Tannin
A tannin is an astringent, bitter plant polyphenolic compound that binds to and precipitates proteins and various other organic compounds including amino acids and alkaloids.The term tannin refers to the use of...
and its hard, durable timber
Timber
Timber may refer to:* Timber, a term common in the United Kingdom and Australia for wood materials * Timber, Oregon, an unincorporated community in the U.S...
) by a few landowners who exploited their workers. In the following years, Berni's works reflected this natural and social tragedy. In 1955–1956 he painted the series Chaco, depicting the similar situation in Chaco
Chaco Province
Chaco is an Argentine province located in the north of the country, near the border with Paraguay. Its capital is Resistencia on the Paraná River opposite the city of Corrientes...
; it was exhibited in Paris, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
and Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
.
By this time, he also painted some suburban landscapes, and then he invented two stock characters that would make his works recognizable worldwide, Juanito Laguna and Ramona Montiel.
Later years
Following bum March 1976 coup, Berni went to live in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where he painted, did engraving and collage, and exhibited some works. He painted 58 works that were meant for an exhibit in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, but were never displayed there, and were recovered and brought back to Argentina after his death, in 1982. New York struck him as luxurious, consumistic, materially wealthy but spiritually poor. His works showed this with a touch of social irony
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
.
In 1981, his paintings became more spiritual and reflective. He painted apocalyptic murals for a chapel in General Las Heras, Buenos Aires
General Las Heras, Buenos Aires
General Las Heras is a town and a municipality in the north east of the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, 67 km from Buenos Aires City and 120 km from the provincial capital La Plata, on Provincial Route 200. It has a population of about 13,000 as per the...
; a Cristo en el garage ("Christ in the garage"), and the opposition of nature and humanity through a naked woman lying in the sand under the moon, this harmonious night disturbed by the passing of an airplane. Berni died that same year, on October 13.