Composition, 1980

Gianni Bertini  

Gianni Bertini born on 1922 in Pisa, Italy. "Arte Nucleare" is a term applied to a style of Italian painting prevalent in the 1950s. The "Movimento Nucleare" was founded in 1951 by Enrico Baj and Sergio Dangelo, with Gianni Bertini, to promote a gestural, fantastical style of avant-garde art. 

In their first manifesto in 1952, the artists introduced the idea of 'nuclear painting' and made it clear that they were striving for a relevant representation of post-War man and his precarious environment. Arte nucleare stood in opposition to the powers unleashed in the atomic age and expressed the general fear of imminent and uncontrollable damage from nuclear physics. The artists also reacted against the pictorial disciplines of De Stijl and all forms of geometric abstraction, pursuing instead the unpredictable effects of Surrealist automatism. This included gestural experiments similar to action painting and Tachism. A further manifesto was released by the Arte nucleare artists in January 1959. This warned against the negative application of new technology and also found possibilities of a positive, aesthetic development from some aspects of atomic fission.