“I was born an artist and I will die an artist,” is how Fabrizio Berti responds to those who ask about the origins of his pictorial inspiration. “It was the only thing I could do,” explains the artist, “it’s something you feel inside; and I realized that people recognize it in me.” Fabrizio Berti’s paintings depict round figures, harmonized by muted colors, placed in rarefied contexts with few significant objects; their faces have barely hinted features, or are completely devoid of them. “I don’t usually paint the features,” says Berti, “sometimes I just give a couple of strokes of the brush. These are faces that you may or may not like, but looking at them, they still have an expression.” Fabrizio Berti, sometimes uses watercolors and, for his style, has been defined an impressionist. In this period he prefers wooden boards to canvases, he uses mixed techniques and his style borders on expressionism. But he does not set limits in techniques and materials, he calls himself an all-round artist and is also a sculptor of clay. “My mission is the representation of the everyday. In sculpture I never use marble or iron because I find them cold. I follow my instinct; once an alabaster boulder was brought to me and a sixteenth-century character came out of it.”
Fabrizio Berti lives his work as a divine investiture that he has received since birth. He defines himself as an intermediary of something that comes to him from above with a very precise objective: to communicate ancient atmospheres to new generations. “What don’t I like about today’s world?” says the artist, “With technology you can build artificial limbs or help people heal through modern machinery. But young people are always living with their cell phones in their hands and think that’s the only way to get things done.” As a boy, Berti attended art school in Varese, the city where he has always lived. Even at school he immediately showed his strong personality. He recounts: “Art school was the only thing I could do, but even there I wanted to do things my way.
During the life drawing class, while the others were all copying the same object, I was attracted to something else and there was no way to convince me. Soon the teachers understood that they had to let me create the way I wanted to.” After high school, Fabrizio, following his high school friends, began to study graphic design, but dropped out after two years, immediately realizing that his path was different. He devoted himself, therefore, body and soul to painting, while doing various other jobs, from switchboard operator, to salesman, to restorer; a job, the latter, that he loves and that he learned from one of the most authoritative masters of Lombardy. The artistic turning point comes in 2014, when, unexpectedly, he is invited to exhibit at the event “Spoleto incontra Venezia” (Spoleto meets Venice), set up at Palazzo Falier, a historic Venetian building overlooking the Grand Canal. Since then, the requests for purchases and exhibitions of his works increase significantly. He participates in exhibitions a bit ‘everywhere, in Italy and abroad, in Germany, Switzerland, Boston, United States. Fabrizio Berti is a man of few words: “I prefer to speak through my art”, he explains. But since 2006 it is his wife who helps him in communication: after meeting in Ischia, the two have never left each other and Fabrizio decided almost immediately to move to Tarquinia, a historic town in Lazio, the place of origin of his partner.
In this new context, between the countryside and the sea, Berti started a new artistic and life path. “I am not a venal person, I am satisfied with what I have,” explains the artist. “Lately I’ve been receiving requests from galleries and events in different countries, but right now I don’t feel like it, I prefer to focus on my paintings.” Fabrizio Berti recently opened a studio in Tarquinia, managing to set it up during the lockdown period due to the Covid-19 epidemic. Among the requests he has received lately, there is one that Berti has considered for the not too distant future: to exhibit at the prestigious Art Basel, the international fair held every year in Switzerland.
Media Contact
Company Name: The Art Insider
Contact Person: Dave Ash
Email: Send Email
Phone: +44 7719 787388
Country: United Kingdom
Website: www.art-insider.com