Roger Bertemes was born in Boevange in the Luxembourg Ardennes as the son of a suit tailor. He followed a dual career working mainly as a visual artist and teacher and, to a lesser extent, also as a writer.
At the beginning of his professional activity, he opted for a career as a teacher. After attending the Ecole normale d'instituteurs (teachers' training college) from 1942 to 1947 in Ettelbrück and Luxembourg, he worked at the primary school in Boevange, Bastendorf and Luxembourg City from 1947 to 1971. The year 1961 marked a decisive turning point in his professional life. After an internship at the Centre international d'études pédagogiques in Sèvres (CIEP), he studied engraving in Paris for three months in the studio of Johnny Friedlaender (1912-1992). Back in Luxembourg, he opened the first engraving studio, where he trained a whole generation of artists, including Isabelle Lutz and Marc Frising. In 1970, he stopped teaching primary school in order to share his knowledge with secondary school pupils. From 1970 to 1987, he was a lecturer in art education at the Lycée technique des arts et métiers (Applied Arts and Crafts Technical College) in Luxembourg City.
He married in 1951. He and his wife had two sons, including the curator Paul Bertemes and the archeologist François Bertemes.
Bertemes' work is multidisciplinary. It includes engravings, watercolours, acrylic paintings, oil paintings, Indian ink washes, collages, drawings, stained glass windows (in the churches of Beggen, Betzdorf, Sanem and Limpach), some sculptures as well as artists’ books. As for his pictorial work, this evolved from figuration to abstraction. Furthermore, his artistic work is strongly linked to his literary activity. Bertemes wrote artists' books as well as poetic texts. He further illustrated more than forty collections of poems as well as several literary texts by national and international authors.
At the beginning of his teaching career, Bertemes discovered his passion for painting around 1947. He was a self-taught artist who started out as a figurative artist. Gradually, however, he turned away from figuration and became interested in abstraction (École de Paris), more precisely in non-figuration. Bertemes drew the inspiration for his subjects mainly from his love for nature, more precisely for his native land: The Oesling, the north of Luxembourg. In this period, he depicted Ardennes landscapes whilst also showing a pronounced interest in the depiction of human figures. Over the years, his landscapes came to reflect more and more the impressions he had gathered from his numerous trips to Finland, the Swiss Valais, the Massif des Maures, Brittany and Scotland. While works from the early 1960s reflect the artist's favourite nature related themes (landscapes, land, water), and were executed in geometric forms with precise contours, these contours gradually blurred as time progressed.
With time, more spiritual aspects became increasingly important, for example in The Totem of Inari from 1978. In this way, the artist moved steadily away from the influences of the École de Paris. Other sources of inspiration came to prominence: the artist was inspired by the Far East (ink drawings, the disappearance of the frame, the primacy of the gesture, the sculptural aspect), as can be seen in his work on paper (e. g. Procession from 1956). Concurrently, the human figure resurfaced as a core subject. Although humans were present in his landscapes from the beginning, they have disappeared and reappeared in the course of his creations. At the end of the 1970s, Bertemes used sewing patterns that he found in the attic of his childhood home to make a series of collages entitled Hommage à mon père. He also used them for an engraving, which highlights the artist’s excellent technical skills. The artist stacked or juxtaposed the patterns and drew onto them, transforming them into "human substitutes" (Bisdorff 52). He continued his reflection in the series Dialogue avec mes Ancêtres (1983), followed by the series Têtes and Dormeurs (1991). His interest in the human being led to more poetic and philosophical subjects, such as the mystery of humanity, the passing of time, memories, the durability of beings and things as well as death.
In 1959, a first solo exhibition took place at the Galerie Beffa in Luxembourg. Since then, Bertemes has been present in exhibtions in Luxembourg and abroad (Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the USA). He also participated in numerous international biennials, including the Venice Biennale in 1972. Today, his works can be found in the most important collections in Luxembourg (e. g. Musée national d'archéologie, d’histoire et d'art (MNAHA), Les 2 Musées de la Ville de Luxembourg) as well as abroad (e. g. Library of Congress in Washington, Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris).
In 1950, Bertemes joined the artists’ association Cercle artistique de Luxembourg (CAL). As of 1958, he was a member and later president of the non-profit association "Art à l'école" (Art at School) in Luxembourg. He was also a member of the arts and literature section of the Institut Grand-Ducal. Since 1964, he was represented successively by the Galerie Ernest Horn, the Galerie Paul Brück and finally, the Galerie de Luxembourg. Abroad, he was represented by the Galerie André Biren in Paris, the Galerie Schindler in Bern, the Galerie Synthèse in Brussels/Antwerp and the Galerie Hüsstege in S’Hertogenbosch.
He was awarded numerous prizes. Among those were the Grand-Duc Adolphe prize in 1960, the prize of the International Biennial of Graphic Art, Buenos Aires, 1969, as well as that of Lodz in 1989, followed three years later by the Pierre Werner prize (of which he was the first recipient).
Since the beginning of his artistic career, Bertemes has been considered to be a very talented and promising artist in Luxembourg. In 1954, the art critic and curator Joseph-Emile Muller emphasised the progression of his work. He considered Bertemes’ use of colour poetic and appreciated the thoughtful and free construction of the oeuvre (page unknown). In 1978, Bertemes was listed in the International Directory of Arts as a Luxembourg artist. The critic Joseph Paul Schneider described him as "one of the best engravers and painters of our time" (4). Indeed, by influencing the development of professional engraving, Bertemes helped the engraving medium to become a recognised art form in Luxembourg (Schneider 4). In 1989, the curator Jean-Luc Koltz referred to Bertemes as one of the representatives of the Luxembourg School of non-figurative art (93). In 1987, the critic Lucien Kayser highlighted the authenticity of this artist, underlining the presence of Guillaume Apollinaire's three plastic virtues, namely purity, unity and truth, in his work (Wagener et al.).
It seems undeniable that throughout his long life, the prolific artist never stopped exploring new ground in order to improve himself. The artist and his work are inseparable. Over the years, he developed a unique and highly personal pictorial language through his analysis of nature and the human being. At the same time, his desire to restrict everything to the essential gives his work a universal character.
Woks cited
Bertemes, Roger, Marc Frising, and Paul Bertemes. Roger Bertemes: Œuvres gavées. Luxembourg: Saint-Paul, 2007. Print.
Bertemes, Roger, and Musée national d'histoire et d'art. Roger Bertemes: Lignes et Volumes: Exposition du 14 mars au 27 avril 1997 au Musée national d'histoire et d'art, Luxembourg. Luxembourg: MNHA, 1997. Exhibition catalogue.
Bisdorff, Georgette. "Roger Bertemes: Peintre et Poète." Nos Cahiers: Lëtzebuerger Zäitschrëft fir Kultur 2 (2004): 52. Print.
International Directory of Arts. 12th ed. Frankfurt Am Main: Art Adress Verlag, 1974/1978. Print.
Kayser, Lucien, and Paul Bertemes. "Je vais dessiner pour garder ces images": Roger Bertemes: Le Tournant Finlandais. Luxembourg: MediArt, 2012. Print.
Koltz, Jean Luc, and Musée national d'histoire et d'art. 150 Ans d'art Luxembourgeois au Musée national d'histoire et d'art: Peinture et sculpture depuis 1839: Exposition au Musée national d'histoire et d'art Luxembourg du 17 novembre au 31 décembre 1989. 3rd ed. Luxembourg: Ministère d'Etat, 2005, Print.
Muller, Joseph-Émile. "Der Salon des 'Cercle Artistique'." Tageblatt 08.10.1954: page unknown. Print.
Schneider, Joseph Paul. "Tableaux d'une exposition Roger Bertemes." Luxemburger Wort 12.05.1973: 4. Print.
Wagener, Danièle, Lucien Kayser, Marc Frising, and Roger Bertemes. Bertemes: Gravures, Peintures: 10 avril - 18 mai 1987: Villa Vauban, Galerie d'Art Municipale, Ville de Luxembourg. Luxembourg, 1987. Exhibition catalogue. Print.
Malgorzata Nowara
2022-11-09
Please cite this article as follows:
Malgorzata Nowara."Roger Bertemes."
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