Pigalle direction Mairie d'Issy, Paris
(Pigalle towards Mairie d’Issy, Paris)

1959, watercolour, 39 x 52 cm
Coll. Museum L, Louvain-la-Neuve (Serge Goyens de Heusch donation)
N ° inv. 833

Bertrand made new notations on that theme during a stay in Paris in 1958. Strictly speaking, these were not urban views like he did in Italy but rather underground subway perspectives. Gaston Bertrand experimented new interplays of curves and arcades through his exploration of the familiar underground universe of the Paris subway: its vaulted labyrinth and the multitude of arched corridors and stairs which were completely empty when he saw them. When he went to the Latin Quarter, as he frequently did so, Bertrand took the subway and continued his fascinated exploration of the various entrances. On the basis of notes and sketches (very few of them have been kept and preserved by the artist), Bertrand produced around fifteen watercolours in 1959 and 1960.

The first of these watercolours, Pigalle direction Mairie d’Issy, immediately appeared as a masterpiece. At first sight, it may look surprising that a painter being so distant from realism and so much attracted to pure shapes could find his inspiration in the Paris subway and its functional labyrinths with pallid lights, variegated with display ads, where anonymous and somnambulist crowds are strolling and where the syncopated lament of some marginal saxophonist resonates. Actually, none of these aspects retained the attention of the artist. Indeed, his sketches do not show any human figure and only express very little movement, with no details regarding the décor or the urban furniture. The artist only focused on the long and silent corridors or stairs narrowed by the low arcades.