Natale
Bertuletti
Natale Bertuletti was born in Mapello (Bergamo) on 12th June 1915.
He came from a poor family, but the notable of the town had sensed his ability: as a child he used to draw with the coal embers of the fireplace. For this reason he had sent him to artistic studies.
When he was only twelve he enrolled at the Carrara Academy in the city and in the period between 1927 and 1934, when the styles and trends of the "Novecentisti" were becoming part of the Bergamo tradition, he studied under the guidance of talented masters (Luigi Brignoli and Contardo Barbieri).
Exuberant and genuine, but unused to elite society, he loved more the company of the simple folks, of his relatives and fellow countrymen, sometimes depicted in the frescoes to impersonate some Saint.
He is a portraitist much appreciated for his ability to represent the subject with spontaneity, through decisive and sure signs.
His portraits can be found in Italy and abroad and represent both famous and ordinary people.
Natale Bertuletti prefers the faces of the people from his land, in which he recognized himself. Because of his personality he was appreciated by Angelo Roncalli, the Pope from Bergamo, who honoured him with his esteem and friendship, as we can evince by the numerous portraits he had commissioned to him both when he was Patriarch and Pope.
In 1981, for the celebrations for the centenary of the birth of Pope John XIII, he illustrated the volume "Volto d'Angelo".
These works, in their original form, have been exhibited in both Bergamo and Rome and are currently on permanent display at the Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) in Sotto il Monte (Bergamo).
As an eclectic artist, he also took on mural painting, especially of religious nature, frescoing several churches in the Bergamo area.
Other suggestive themes of the artist's oil paintings, expressed with fast and elegant brushstrokes that freely followed the vibrant form of the drawings, are: fresh or withered flowers, mountain or plain landscapes, the humble fruits of the earth.
Until 1988 he exhibited this vast repertoire in various exhibitions.
In his long professional career, he has made a valuable contribution to the twentieth century Lombard painting. His art, linked to the figurative and post-figurative style, with experiences of the informal in some periods, has evolved over time, with an increasing freedom of sign and incisiveness of brushstrokes.
Painting was his life. He cultivated it above all in his study, which he called "my church, where all my feelings have a way of manifesting themselves".
He died in Bergamo in 1994.
Posthumous exhibitions have been held in Bergamo, at the San Bartolomeo Cultural Centre, the Sala Manzù of the Province, the Atelier Tadini of Lovere (Bergamo).
The painter's works are held at the Bergamaschi Archconfraternity in Rome and at the Pontifical Roman Major Seminary, at the Patriarchate of Venice, at the Bishop’s Palace of Bergamo, at Cà Granda in Milan and in numerous private collections.
In 2009 a room in the civic library of Mapello, his native town, was dedicated to him.
In 2015, the centenary of his birth, a great retrospective of the painter, organized by the Greppi Cultural Circle of Bergamo, honoured him at the Ex Church of La Maddalena, in Bergamo.
Fame and
quotes
"He has preserved the fruits of an artistic education built on solid foundations, but has freed himself from any academic legacy and has relived in a very personal way the events that followed the release of painting from any illustrative remorse, while remaining faithful to a strictly figurative conception."
(Mario Monteverdi in: "Arte italiana per il mondo" - 1982)
L. Borghese, D. Buzzati, E. Calcaterra, L. Pata, M. Pezzotta, C. Rota Nodari, U. Ronchi, T. Spini, V. Valsecchi, C. Zavattini, L. Lazzari, A. Possenti, S. Nava.
"Natale Bertuletti's painting represents the link between the figurative painting of the early twentieth century and the one where the lessons of a tradition that cannot be completely forgotten, but that can be overcome with ease and expressive taste, come together."
(Antonio De Santis in: "Pittura orobica del 1° Novecento" - 1984)
L. Borghese, D. Buzzati, E. Calcaterra, L. Pata, M. Pezzotta, C. Rota Nodari, U. Ronchi, T. Spini, V. Valsecchi, C. Zavattini, L. Lazzari, A. Possenti, S. Nava.
"A breath of modernity, aware of the innovative ideas that permeate the entire twentieth century, has always dominated his work, accompanying it with colour arrangements open to the unpredictability of the real... It is on those tonal chords, in gestures dissolved in the vibrations of light that the artist's hand will stop, in the final moments of his work."
(Sandra Nava in: "Natale Bertuletti - Nel colore tra forma e luce" - 2015)
L. Borghese, D. Buzzati, E. Calcaterra, L. Pata, M. Pezzotta, C. Rota Nodari, U. Ronchi, T. Spini, V. Valsecchi, C. Zavattini, L. Lazzari, A. Possenti, S. Nava.