IN TUNE WITH THE WORLD
An encounter with the work of an artist who observed the world with both sensitivity and rigor, transforming daily observation into art. From experiments focused on balance and growth to works created during years of isolation, the exhibition speaks of a search for meaning without grand gestures.
The Ștefan Bertalan exhibition is curated by Bernard Blistène, Honorary Director of the Centre Pompidou – National Museum of Modern Art, with the collaboration of Iuna Șerban, curator at MARe.
Ștefan Bertalan explored the relationship between humans, nature, and technology, observing the world as an organic system held in a fragile balance between order and chaos. Fascinated by light, rhythm, and growth, he kept daily notes of his observations of plants and natural environments. After 1981, when he was dismissed for political reasons from his teaching position in architecture in Timișoara, his life and art entered a phase of lucid melancholy. Self-exiled, isolated, and disillusioned, Bertalan painted potatoes, transforming the banal into a symbol of survival and decline. During this period, the solar light of the 1970s fades into a diffuse, interior light—an expression of a consciousness that continues to search for meaning in darkness.
The exhibition follows a thematic rather than chronological structure, highlighting the subjects and processes that shaped the artist’s research and explorations: his early studies and works in Cluj-Napoca; the period in Timișoara, where he studied and taught between 1970 and 1981; his forced exile in Öhringen (Germany) between 1986 and 2012; and his eventual return to Timișoara — the city he chose, where he carried out essential work through his teaching at the Academy and his active contribution to the city’s intense cultural life.
Bertalan emerges as a charismatic and alert figure, attentive both to the sensory world and to the profound social and political changes he witnessed — and in which he played an indispensable role.
Two of the exhibition rooms foreground Ștefan Bertalan’s relationship with the other co-founders of the 111 and SIGMA groups, two artistic movements to which he made a decisive contribution. Alongside the works gathered in this section — including the renowned installation Multivision, created in 1978 in collaboration with Constantin Flondor and Doru Tulcan — a range of lesser-known works, archives, and documents will be presented, enriching the understanding of these two key moments of Romanian and European neo-avant-gardes of the 1960s–1980s.
The exhibition at MARe, on view from February 6 to May 3, 2026, represents the second stage of the retrospective dedicated to Ștefan Bertalan, following the inaugural presentation initiated by Art Encounters at ISHO Center Timișoara (April 3 – June 29, 2025).
Parteners: Esther Schipper Gallery & Art Encounters.
Thanks to our supporters: Goethe-Institut, Galeria Jecza, Muzeul Național de Artă Timișoara (MNArT) & Muzeul Brukenthal.
Sponsors: BT, PLOOM, AQUA, Sâmburești
Media partners: Radio Guerrilla, EuroNews, Urban, Matca, ArteVezi, Propagarta, Les Dedans, Zeppelin, BIZ, Haute Culture, Itsy Bitsy
