Florence géométrique
(Geometric Florence)

1972, oil painting on canvas, 195 x 97 cm
Coll. Gaston Bertrand Foundation
N° inv. 1247

The distance separating Bertrand from his own time is due to his vision of art in general and of his own art in particular. For Bertrand, the intensity of an emotion leading to the shape’s disintegration is a sensitiveness defect. Gaston Bertrand did not consider art as a realm of freedom in which the artist abolishes all constraints with the – ever dashed - hope to find the force’s principle. He fully agreed with Stravinsky, whom he frequently quoted and whose position echoes the ones of Da Vinci and Michelangelo: “my freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.”
Florence géométrique is part of a series of four large vertical and oblong paintings which were inspired by the Medici Chapel and are entitled Florence.