Giovanni Battista Bertelli Biography
BERTELLI GIOVAN BATTISTA. Brescia, 31 January 1922 - 16 September 2001 GB Bertelli's pictorial activity has roots in his family, well known because it was made up of restorers. Father, mother and brothers held and still hold a renowned "workshop" whose name is linked to the works of illustrious artists: from Moretto to Giacomo Ceruti, from Romanino to other Lombard and Venetian masters. The trade he learned at home made him a very diligent executor of restorations (so much so that it is not difficult for him to imitate the best) and his fame was already vast for that activity. But even greater must have been that of illustrator of national publications, such as "Il Corriere dei piccolo" or "La Domenica del Corriere" in whose pages he dedicated countless tables to the most diverse aspects of creation: from flowers to birds, to animals in gender, to their natural environment. Therefore better known outside than within his native walls. His watercolor paintings created in the high studio of an alley leading into Piazza T. Brusato are also affected by "scientific" precision and in which the truth of the places portrayed is all there, "filtered by the subtle emotion of a quiet personality and lyrical." They are still lifes, with flowers from barely sunny plains; ancient districts of hilly and mountain villages with woody mezzanines, and snow on those roofs, where the atmosphere weighs silently. Only in the Seventies was the painter, freer from commitments to the big publishers, able to present himself in exhibitions. The anthological exhibition presented at the “Il Pitocchetto” Art Gallery from 21 September to 18 October 2002 with the auspices of the “M. Artists Association” summarizes them all. Sweets", whose catalog offers the result of an intense industriousness illustrating districts of "ancient Brescia", places on the outskirts, hilly and mountain locations whose iconographic precision takes on documentary value over time. Alongside there are typical figures of farmers, still lifes with game... With the note of the personal exhibitions held by Bertelli from 1971 to 2000 in the Galleria San Michele, repeatedly at the AAB, the Libreria Queriniana, in Lumezzane and Bagnolo Mella, an essential bibliography is proposed , which can be integrated with the review that appeared in “La Voce del Popolo” on 27 September 2002.
