EMILIO VEDOVA: GIAN BERRA ricorda:

Era il 1980 quando Gian Berra incontrò il vecchio maestro Emilio Vedova nelle antiche sale dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia. Era un agosto non troppo caldo quando mi attirò quel professore schivo e taciturno che si teneva un po’ scostato da tutti. Gli ero vicino e lo salutai risvegliandolo dai sui pensieri. Pareva distratto. Ma era solo una finta. Per lui il mondo reale era solo un impiccio da osservare. Così osservò me che gli rivolgevo la parola come un qualcosa da indagare. Mi tese la mano come a saggiare l’aria. Poi senza parlare mi guardò negli occhi.
Magro e un po’ rigido usava la sua eleganza come un supporto necessario. Portava appesi al collo gli occhiali, legati con un nastro di velluto nero. Mi esortava a parlare, ad esprimermi.
Poche parole di presentazione e gli domandai del suo lavoro.
Parlava poco e controllava ogni attimo i suoi pensieri. Quando cercavo un po’ di confidenza si smarriva in domande vaghe cercando nuovi pensieri. Si vedeva bene che era stanco di discutere di arte, forse avrebbe preferito ci fossimo trovati giù al bar di fronte.
Ricordai una sua foto del dopoguerra: lo ritraeva giovane e ben messo, con dei bei capelli e la barba scura che incorniciava quel volto sognante. Ora l’età appannava la sua figura ma lo faceva con gran rispetto.
In quella sua pittura diafana e dai segni senza colore stava il suo sogno. Gesti liberi che chiedevano solo di volare senza sosta dentro l’idea che mai aveva voluto racchiudere in una forma riconoscibile. Una forma oscura fatta di sensazioni senza lidi sicuri.
E la teneva segreta quella forma, palese nel timore di rovinarla. Di mostrarsi troppo agli altri. Ma anche a sé stesso.
Un vecchio maestro pittore di Montebelluna (TV) mi disse che negli anni trenta lo incontrava tutti i giorni quando andava a studiare all’Accademia di Belle Arti a Venezia. Non aveva i soldi per frequentarla, ma lo accolsero lo stesso. Ci teneva davvero a fare quella scuola!
Ora Emilio Vedova se ne è andato. Restano come Totem fuori dal tempo le sue opere, testimoni di un sogno che sa tanto di speranza e di gioco. Un gioco che attira tutte le persone sensibili a ciò che non ha una identità definita.
La vita si manifesta a tanti livelli misteriosi ed Emilio Vedova ha fatto del suo meglio per esplorarli.

Novembre 2006, Gian Berra.

EMILIO VEDOVA: GIAN BERRA remembers:

It was 1980 when Gian Berra met the old teacher Emilio Vedova in the ancient rooms of the Academy of Belle Arti of Venice. It was too much not one August heat when that bashful and taciturn teacher attracted me that a po was held removed by everybody. I was nearby him and I greeted him waking up again you give him on the thoughts. It seemed distracted. But it was only a pretense. For him the real world was only a hindrance to observe. This way it observed me that I turned him the word as a something from extended indagare.Mi the hand as to test the air. Then without speaking it looked me in the eyes.Thin and a rigid po used its elegance as a necessary support. It brought suspended to the neck the glasses, tied up with a ribbon of black velvet. It exhorted me to speak, to express me.Few words of presentation and I asked him of his/her job. He spoke few and it checked every instant his thoughts. When I looked for a po of confidence it lost him in vague questions looking for new thoughts. You saw well that was tired to discuss of art, hewould have preferred there perhaps we were found down to the cafe of forehead.I remembered one photo of his of the postwar period: it withdrew him young and well put, with of the beautiful hair and the dark beard that it framed that dreamy face. Now the age misted its figure but it did him with big respect.In that diaphanous painting of his and from the signs without color its dream was. Free gestures that asked only to fly without standstill inside the idea that had ever wanted to contain in a recognizable form. A form dark sort of feelings without sure beaches.And it held her secret that form, clear in the fear to ruin her/it. To appear too much to the others. But also to itself same.An old teacher painter of Montebelluna (TV) it told me that in the thirties he met him every day when it went to study to the academy of Belle Arti to Venice. He didn't have the money to frequent it, but they welcomed him the same. Held indeed us to make that school!Emilio Vedova has now gone. As Totems stay out of the time its works, witnesses of a dream that know so much of hope and of game. A game that attracts all the sensitive people to what doesn't have a defined identity.Life manifests himself to so many mysterious levels and Emilio Vedova has done better than his to explore them.

 November 2006, Gian Berra

Gian Berra, Choggia barocca

Gian Berra, Informal Baroque

Gian Berra, periferia veneta

Gian Berra, l'isola che non c'è

       Gian Berra:a native earth artist veneta.

Every earth from the own fruits.They are its sons.Nutrono of it, they breathe its air and they drink its water.The life sprouts and it does not ask that for living.
Not there are of because.The manifest life with unexpected and unforeseeable creative potentialities.And the artist is the Jolly that every time rimescola the papers and proposes infinite never expectable possibilities.
Gian Berra celebrates its today first 35 painting years.` an artist to full time that gives young person has turned po' a world and then she is returned to breathe the air of house with a series of experiences that has allowed it to confront many human situations.
Gian Berra is an artist perennially in contact with that it lives.They fascinate the own identities hidden in the similar ones.They hide their better sides behind appearances;behaviors that reveal in continuous the wealth of everyone.The artist sees this wealth and she renders it evident to all.
The nature that is round, than feeds to us but that also it puts us to the test, it is full of special signs and languages that are therefore easy to collect.Gian famous Berra tones of light, shapes, personages and with free emotion renders them realizes.From a shape to the language of the life.
The sensibility to the essence of the other consciences is a special gift, but scomodo.
The artist alive its role with dispetto.He sees, feels one increased truth.Cruccia because others do not notice it.And he cannot any make less.That one is its role.E' the only way for being totally same himself.E' its scomodo treasure.
The life with infinite enthusiasm lives:the life is too much beautiful, wonderful, sfaccettata like one gem.Like turning the look elsewhere
Gian Berra alive the emotion of living.And it would want, from true egoist, than also all the others made it.From this point of view a large one is deceived, but its pictures speak also to all those that to the wonder for the life, did not think more to us.

35 years of artistic activity.

How many extensions in 35 years!Gian Berra is a self-taught, even if in 1980 it has attended for po' an Academy of Fine Arts of Venice.
But because you had gone to us
- It was in order to see what was made here.I from years already painted, but the curiosity had come me to see, to feel.They are a great onlooker by nature.I spoke with Emilio Vedova who taught in that school.I remained disappointed of the that atmosphere.And me I returned some in hill.
- And the extensions
- I have begun when the boom of the art already was ended.To half of 70 years ' great part of the market was ended.Nobody to which turning me for a council.Therefore I invented myself all.Self-taught until in bottom.He was enough to me to be able living free "to make art" and not to possibly make debits.And when I felt disconsolate me of I went to take a walk on gravels of the Piave.
Of extensions Gian Berra of it it has organized indeed many.Nearly always you space publics or places also R-di.fortuna.Until in 1990 it the idea comes to try to collect friends around to himself.I found the Cultural Association the Criola with the scope to create a group of sensitive persons to the art.With to they it organizes collective extensions.
In the 1993 nozzle a "practical painting Course" turned to all those that feel to try the magic of painting.E' a sucessone.But also a great responsibility that tired, but fills up of satisfaction.

- Today we are in 1996, like goes the course
- This year they are taken one pause to me, little of breath in order to think next to new things.
- And the budget of 14 years of course
- I have tried to count the persons "students" of the course, and would have to be at least 900.Nearly me it does not seem possible…
- And the "new things"
- I am entering in one new phase of my life.For who it lives the art is an inner requirement to always act with spontaneità.To listen to the just inner one and to follow the intuition.They are feelings, emotions that try new ways with which playing to the life.I feel of having to elaborate a new pittorico language.One technical alternative to that already I operate.Always they have been a "espressionista to the veneta".A agreste romantico, archaic atmosphere dreamer.But however very it lives still…But ten years ago I began to come down more in depth.I let to go to a more informal style, a search that I have held for me.Up to now I have not never exposed these jobs.
- Desires to change style
- Not indeed.But I feel that these jobs are mature for being proposals to the public in alternative to the others.Simply I leave that a hidden part of me is revealed.It will be this depth to say its.And I free it lascerò to play.
- This pittorica subpersonalità has a name
- Of sure it has a name, mine.They are always I, that hour I only reveal it to outside of me.One painting without shape.Not directly leggibile.A message from that it is hidden within the intimate essence of everyone.Expressed with a leggibile language only with feelings and emotions.Like it is made from children.
- A language of the Archetypes
- Perhaps perhaps Mah, something deeper anchor… the Archetypes has need of a shape fixed or, but nearly leggibile in every culture.To one be primordiale not there are not even the images.
- Then you propose an informal one
- Something more.We live in a civilization that continuously reinventa same himself even if seems has one fixed outline.We live in perennial "forfeiture";but every forfeiture is in truth is one rebirth.And we know all to it.To the end of 1700 it was the same thing and the baroque style of is the test.Baroque means to put a ricciolo compiaciuto to just the change.Living with taste the own impermanenza…
- A "informal baroque"
- Bravo! Here the name:Informal Baroque of Gian Berra.