ABSTRACT
Installation artist, painter and collagist Emerging as a young artist in the 1970s, Bartolini was influenced by Alberto Burri and arte povera (poor art). From early conceptual pieces in kleenex and cardboard, he moved to installations of similarly modest materials, evoking dream images and mythological themes. In the early 1980s he turned to painting and developed a vocabulary of archetypal forms that included labyrinths, tantric motifs and a mysterious pseudoalphabet of angular shapes. Subsequently, during a stay in Berlin he shifted into a more expressionistic mode, with agitated brushwork and murky colours that lacked the refinement and the suggestive quality of his earlier work. His ongoing fascination with the aesthetic qualities of paper and calligraphy also took the form of publishing books, beginning in 1974 with a book entitled Soft.
