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Lot Essay
Antonio Berni is immediately associated with the highly politically engaged work he produced most of his career. But to constrain him in this obvious mold is to miss some of his most sensitive, evocative work. His portraiture of the late 1930s and early 1940s demonstrates a more subtle approach than much of his better-known work. A number of paintings from this time focus on young women. Berni's oeuvre of this period retains a connection to the metaphysical surrealism he practiced in the earlier part of the decade. Gone are the oversized buttons, keys, and clothespins. What does remain however are the strongly architectural facades and bisecting planes, intense colors and a palpable emotional tension. The emotional insecurity present in his surrealist works, so inspired by de Chirico, is supplanted by explicitly choreographed human figures. The figure serves two equally important functions. As narrative and structure, the girl occupies both a dimensional and an emotional space. The tone is intense while the colors are subdued.
In Niña con Guantes Berni employs the subdued color palate and a tenebrous light to frame the figure. This is not a cheerful homage to carefree youth; rather a solemn and contemplative image of impending maturity. The pre-teen girl is painted in a dark corner, a flat white light falls upon her and catches the folds in her red dress, chair, face and body- but does not brighten the wall behind. The window does not further illuminate the scene; it simply allows a view of the dark saturated sky beyond. This glimmer of the outside world places her within a space and moment- though not a discernible time of day- rather a specific moment of her youth, the spring of her adolescence.
Most striking about this portrait is Berni's ability to capture a quality that is specific to so many girls at this stage in life--a contrived confidence derived of the knowledge of a powerful blossoming sexuality. Berni expertly captures a manufactured confidence in her cool steely gaze, the determined clutching of her gloves and the other arm allowed to hang languidly over the back of the chair. Portraiture of young women is nothing new but the frank quality of this piece is extraordinary and can be surprisingly paralleled with the paintings of Balthus of the same time. Balthus is particularly known for this subject matter and most of his great paintings are provocative portraits of similarly pubescent girls.
There is no evidence to suggest that the artists ever crossed paths or that Berni was in any way aware of Balthus' work. The two artists both spent time in Paris and other European cultural centers throughout the 1920s; both moved away from abstraction and surrealism, concretely stating their devotion to the figure. Their techniques are not dissimilar--defined by sharp contours and mineral rich colors with minimal ornamention. Most eloquent is the connection the artists share in their ability to capture that elusive yet distinct quality common to girls on the verge of womanhood, a subtle act of divination and in the case of Berni not again repeated. The majority of his work cannot be called subtle, neither in intent nor execution. As his realismo crítico became doctrine, Berni moved to ever stronger and more obvious subject matter. This portrait gives the evidence of the underlying sensitivity so essential to the emotive masterworks of the realismo crítico period and further reinforces Berni's link to other innovators of 20th Century art.
In Niña con Guantes Berni employs the subdued color palate and a tenebrous light to frame the figure. This is not a cheerful homage to carefree youth; rather a solemn and contemplative image of impending maturity. The pre-teen girl is painted in a dark corner, a flat white light falls upon her and catches the folds in her red dress, chair, face and body- but does not brighten the wall behind. The window does not further illuminate the scene; it simply allows a view of the dark saturated sky beyond. This glimmer of the outside world places her within a space and moment- though not a discernible time of day- rather a specific moment of her youth, the spring of her adolescence.
Most striking about this portrait is Berni's ability to capture a quality that is specific to so many girls at this stage in life--a contrived confidence derived of the knowledge of a powerful blossoming sexuality. Berni expertly captures a manufactured confidence in her cool steely gaze, the determined clutching of her gloves and the other arm allowed to hang languidly over the back of the chair. Portraiture of young women is nothing new but the frank quality of this piece is extraordinary and can be surprisingly paralleled with the paintings of Balthus of the same time. Balthus is particularly known for this subject matter and most of his great paintings are provocative portraits of similarly pubescent girls.
There is no evidence to suggest that the artists ever crossed paths or that Berni was in any way aware of Balthus' work. The two artists both spent time in Paris and other European cultural centers throughout the 1920s; both moved away from abstraction and surrealism, concretely stating their devotion to the figure. Their techniques are not dissimilar--defined by sharp contours and mineral rich colors with minimal ornamention. Most eloquent is the connection the artists share in their ability to capture that elusive yet distinct quality common to girls on the verge of womanhood, a subtle act of divination and in the case of Berni not again repeated. The majority of his work cannot be called subtle, neither in intent nor execution. As his realismo crítico became doctrine, Berni moved to ever stronger and more obvious subject matter. This portrait gives the evidence of the underlying sensitivity so essential to the emotive masterworks of the realismo crítico period and further reinforces Berni's link to other innovators of 20th Century art.