ROGER BURGI
"LES DEUX MUSCIENS"
OIL ON PANEL, SIGNED, TITLED
FRANCE, C.1950
20 X 16 INCHES
Roger Burgi
Born 1945
Originally Swiss, Roger Burgi painted his first painting in 1966. Since 1973, he has devoted himself entirely to his painting. The critics have placed the painter in the line of Cubists. His instinctive painting often begins in an abstract way, then, guided by the imagination of the artist, a figuration emerges.
Roger BURGI was born in 1945 in Switzerland. After a career as an industrial designer, BURGI devoted himself to painting.
Roger BURGI has spent a few years in Greece.
Originally Swiss, Roger Burgi painted his first painting in 1966. Since 1973, he has devoted himself entirely to his painting. The critics have placed the painter in the line of Cubists. His instinctive painting often begins in an abstract way, then, guided by the imagination of the artist, a figuration emerges.
Critic’s view:
It is doubtless necessary to perceive three primordial influences in the work of Burgi.
First, his training as an industrial draftsman, which is recurrent in his compositions orchestrated around the geometric features and contours.
Then a two-year stay in Greece that brings the sun and the history of the Mediterranean myths.
Finally, a Cubism which has always imposed itself, rhythmizing its course with a more or less strong omnipresence.
Still it is necessary to add the musical theme very frequent in this artist who has long hesitated between the sax and the palette.
The rest belongs to the instinctive pleasure of painting with periods that bring a different chromatic consonance through monochrome series worked in the tonal variations of browns and blues with a marked return of color in the recent paintings.
Burgi is an enthusiast who works a subject until exhaustion before moving on to something else.
But with a commonplace, in this case an abstract writing that treats matter by letting its vibrations take possession of the background.
From then on, the artist lets himself be guided by these effects, taking possession of the forms that impose themselves to compose a real rupestrian fresco.
And anxious to fill the space, strange figurative signs come as hieroglyphics complete the story.
Finally, the subject underlined by a line, reveals charms or evocations most often related to femininity.
And this sensuality of pure forms, reduced to contours, imposes itself in the foreground of the canvas with an orientalist consideration and a pleasure that only needs to be shared.
