Bernard Aubertin biography

Bernard Aubertin was a French artist. He was born in 1934 in Fontenay-aux-Roses in France. After graduating from the State School of Decoration, he approached Cubism and Futurism.
The first youthful paintings were portraits, landscapes and still lifes.
In 1957 meets Yves Klein, who he himself defined as his master and who will influence him in the creation of his famous monochrome canvases.
The first color that Bernard Aubertin experiments with and with which he will be associated for the rest of his life is red, understood as fire, energy, and which will be the undisputed protagonist of his first works, the rouge total.
In 1958 he began creation of the Tableaux Feu to which he will later associate various objects such as nails in the Tableaux Clous, wire in the Tableaux Fil de Fer or matches in the Parcours d'Allumettes.
Starting from the 1960s, Bernard Aubertin also began to use fire as a means of expression, to all intents and purposes the physical manifestation of the color red. From this period are the famous Dessin de feu sur papier in which the destructive force of the matches burned on the canvas will give rise to a new work and the Livres brulés et à brulerin which the flames will be matches, fuses, fulminate sticks, bags of smoke powder placed between the pages of books. In his performances of the 1980s, the artist invited the same spectators to burn the books.
In 1962 he was among the founders of the Gruppo Zero and came into contact with Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Piero Manzoni.
Starting from the 80s and 90s, his artistic research will evolve into performances in which he himself will set pianos on fire and cars, while in recent years the red color of the monochromes will be replaced by white, by black and by gold.
The works of Bernard Aubertin are have been exhibited since the 1970s in the world's most important galleries and in the most prestigious museums. Permanent exhibitions dedicated to the French artist are present at the Graz Art Museum in Austria, at the Dûsseldorf Museum and at the National Center for Contemporary Art in Paris.
Bernard Aubertin died at the age of 81, in 2015, in Reutlingen in Germany.