La plate-forme
(The Platform)

1947, oil painting on canvas, 150 x 100 cm
Private coll., Brussels
N ° inv. 195

The striking way in which Gaston Bertrand depicts human figures, which is unexpectedly moving and beyond humanistic conventions, is driven by the artist’s will to break free from the usual aesthetic representation of human beings. Bertrand tried to create a sense of mystery which always surprises through its originality. This is why he used daring deletions and sacrificed classical coherence in order to focus as much as possible on the real message. This is also why he used colours with the aim of creating subjective harmonies and original skin tones, selected according to their suggestive power. An expressive vitality and a decorative intensity thus emerge from the painting. These legitimate ambitions, although rather daring at the time, are admirably reflected in some gouaches and oil paintings representing, once again, sinister figures standing in corridors or on the tramway platform.
La plate-forme (1947) is a large format painting which was created during the Young Belgian Painting adventure. This work certainly is the artist’s masterpiece on that theme. A clear stylistic evolution can be noted in comparison with the previous versions. Gaston Bertrand felt the need for more asceticism regarding colours and glorified white and grey tones, enhanced here with ochre lines drawn in a falsely naive manner. Tachism has been abandoned in favour of a linear composition in which the faces are reduced to ovoid shapes. The isolated figure on the left side of the painting looks like surreptitiously entering the composition. This man, who is only partly represented (probably a self-portrait), faces the four other figures gathered around the vertical tramway bar which symmetrically divides the composition. This provides a striking and surprisingly original impression: it expresses the pale and silent atmosphere which characterizes Gaston Bertrand’s expressionist figuration.