Bernard Aubertin (1934-2015) - Dessin De Fue

In this "Dessin de Feu" of 2010, Bernard Aubertin distills in an intimate and tactile format the iconoclastic and poetic force that has characterized his entire career. A historic member of the international Gruppo Zero movement, the French artist replaces traditional painting with the purifying element par excellence: fire.

The cardboard ceases to be a simple passive support and becomes living matter, theater of a rapid and unrepeatable alchemical action. Through controlled combustion — direct or triggered by lighting matches applied to the surface — the flame draws without a brush, leaving an indelible imprint made of ash, carborundum, nuances of bistre and deep burn marks.

The work lives on a subtle dialectical tension:
Between destruction and creation: Fire burns and consumes the paper, yet at the same time it shapes it, giving it a new three-dimensionality and an almost sculptural texture.
Between conceptual rigor and spontaneity: The artist's gesture is deliberate and measured, but the final outcome is entrusted to the primordial freedom of the natural element.

In the works of the last years of his life, Aubertin shows an disarming mastery of the medium: this "Dessin de Feu" stands as a relic of pure energy, the physical recording of a fleeting instant transformed into permanent memory.
Archived work