The Elart Swiss gallery in Lausanne is pleased to present a collection of paintings by Cesar Bertel, a Colombian artist whose work is a tribute to “Pachamama”, the magnificent and generous Amazonian forest.
“For 15 years, I lived in the Amazon jungle in Colombia and as a result, I painted its landscape with my large-format watercolors. I would compare it to a living being similar to a woman for its beauty, its shapes, its interior, its perfumes and for that relentless love that bears new fruits. Our Inca, Mayan and Aztec ancestors were right to call it Pachamama, because they saw what I feel when I enter its deep light and unravel its labyrinths and forms.
I experience my fears and its endless polychromy and that is how I draw a map in each creation to go through it and live there, placing the observer in an internal dialogue of harmony with nature in front of my creations.
These jungles are our lives, they are the life of planet Earth: they are fresh water, they are clean air, they are food, they are humidity, they are medicines, they are roof, they are biodiversity but they are also mulatto, Indians, mixed race, black, American, they are sacred, they are humanity, they are for all, they are our essence.
It is not the jungle of New York or Paris; it is not the Natura of Rome, nor the Cybèle of Greece or Beijing; it is our mother earth, the Pachamama of García Márquez, Simón Bolívar, José Eustasio Rivera, Neruda, Chico Méndez, Bertha Cáceres, Juan Ceballos and many others who have given their lives to protect it from progress and the devastating technology of capital.
“In each work, I nourish an inner feeling and respect for the secrets of this immense living being who can only exist through the creative act of a supreme, sovereign and infinitely perfect intelligence, like that of God.”
Cesar Bertel
An important feature of my watercolors is that they are mostly in large formats, in non-woven papers, where I no longer use glass. With this very old method, their life is extended indefinitely.”
