Spider web
/1
- Spider web
- Spinnetz
- 1974-1977
- b&w vintage print
- 24 × 17,7 cm
Ștefan Bertalan’s eager return to nature, systematic study of nature’s structural principles, and meticulous preoccupation with the universe of plants date back to the early 1960s following his arrival in Timișoara to teach as professor at the local art lyceum, where he began to translate from German to Romanian several texts from Paul Klee’s "Pedagogical Sketchbook" and "The Thinking Eye" together with his colleagues Karola Fritz and Constantin Flondor (the latter of whom would join him in co-founding the art groups 111 and Sigma). The impulse of Klee’s writings came to represent a major guiding impulse in Sigma’s teaching and artistic thinking. To the Sigma Group (1969–1978), observation represented a key methodological tool with which to understand the manifold appearance of the natural world using photography, film, and drawing—from spiderwebs to the movements of clouds and birds, and from the analysis of insects’ morphology to the visual stimuli induced by the changing light in the forest. Later on, these observations figured into open-air actions at the Timiș River or in the Pădurea Verde (Green Forest) near Timișoara as well their experimental films, photography, and pedagogical activities. A.Se.