Gianni Bertini was born in 1922 in Pisa, Italy. After World War II, he was in Paris, which at that time was still - despite the interim of the War - considered in artistic and intellectual circles as the world capital of culture, and therefore art. Pablo Picasso and Pierre Matisse led the way: two dominant figures whose achievements every painter dreamed of matching.

Yet in 1947-48 there suddenly emerged a new generation of artists who threw themselves into abstraction. Lyrical art*, Informal art, a new school of Paris, Tachisme*... all these terms designated a new approach to painting, now based on the act of painting and the working of matter.

It was, then, perfectly logical for the young Gianni...