Embrio Stellium ein richtiger Kampf um meines Kopf zu werden zusein
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- Embrio Stellium ein richtiger Kampf um meines Kopf zu werden zu sein
- 1986
- chalk on paper
- 42 × 29,7 cm
Beginning in the 1980s, a new direction emerged in Ștefan Bertalan’s drawings as evidenced by the intensification of their expressionist and gestural aesthetic qualities as well as a deeply existential and dream-like character that quite surprisingly translates into ambiguous representations of the biological forms that he so closely observed. Potentially contradictory, they depict an unsettling cohabitation between human being and plant that begets new hybrid forms: plants-as-humans and/or humans-as-plants. The anthropomorphized plants are sometimes just some of Bertalan’s many alter-egos, while in other cases they constitute self-portraits in which one can see the artist’s facial characteristics overlapping onto the plants. These drawings produce connections to a surreal reality or subconscious world whose various figures, including the artist’s father, make their appearances in a vegetal environment. However, this recasting of Bertalan’s previous methodical and factual research on natural forms and their inner processes was determined by biographical circumstances that had to do with the artist’s move in 1981 to the city of Sibiu (where his wife, Karin Bertalan, had been born) and his decision to emigrate to Germany. Until 1986, when the family received official permission to leave Romania, the artist went through a secluded period described in some of his self-portrait drawings as the equivalent of an “inner emigration” or “moral abyss.” But even so, these remarkable apparitions in his drawings—which reflect the artist’s near-autistic immersion in nature—offer a window into his philosophical contemplations and his dramatic life experiences. A.Se.