2023-05-13 00:34:37
«I believe that the automobile is today a fairly exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean a great period creation, passionately conceived by unknown artists, consumed in its image as well as in its use by a people who turn it into a magical object . The new Citroën clearly falls from the sky insofar as it is presented above all as a superlative object. We must not forget that the object is the best envoy of the supernatural: there is easily in the object both a perfection and an absence of origin, a closure and a brilliance, a transformation of life into matter (matter is more magical than life) and finally a silence that belongs to the order of the astonishing. The ‘Déesse’ has all the characteristics (at least the public is beginning to lend them unanimously) of one of those objects descended from another universe, which have fed the neomania of the 18th century and that of our science fiction; the DS is first and foremost a new Nautilus.” This is how Roland Barthes described the Citroën DS in his work “Mythologies”.
But behind the DS there is a name, but we go by parts. If the brand created by André Citroën occupies a separate space in the creation of the automobile, it is possibly because since its birth in 1919 it has maintained an intense relationship (or should we speak of fusion?) With the world of the arts. Some have used the brand’s models as supports for his work (Víctor Vasarely, Jean Pierre Lihou, Françoise Nielly…). Some have transformed them to conceive new creations (Bernard Rancillac, César, Ora-ïto…). And others have worked for Citroën itself, such as Pierre Louys, a talented poster designer who conceived the famous Citroën advertisements of the 1920s. And Flaminio Bertoni, the father of the DS.
Bertoni, born in Varese (Italy) in 1903, at the age of 15, came into contact with the automobile when he entered the Macchi bodywork firm as an apprentice. He learns sheet metal work, but soon his capacity as a designer stands out, which is why he enrolls in the Varese School of Fine Arts where he has Giuseppe Talamoni, an Italian avant-garde painter, among his teachers, and also attends classes with the painter and poet Lodovico Pogliaghi or the sculptor Enrico Butti, author of several monuments to Garibaldi and renowned for works such as the Warrior of Legnano, in whose elaboration Bertoni himself participated.
Sculpting the model of the Traction Avant
He went to Paris in 1923 where he worked with various bodybuilders including Rotschild, and there he met Lucien Rosengart, a great friend of André Citroën. Flaminio has become a shrewd coachbuilder, perfectly prepared to solve any technical challenge. But in Paris he is not only trained technically. He also spends many hours in the Louvre, fascinated by the works of Raphael and Leonardo. From there new concerns arise and when he has to return to Italy for family reasons, he takes advantage of any moment to study all the artistic manifestations (painting, sculpture) and opens his own studio, which becomes a meeting place for artists of the time.
In 1931 he definitively returned to France where he entered Citroën, in the bodywork department headed by the engineer Cuinet, where he worked on the ‘V’ project, a future Citroën far ahead of any other automobile of the time. But no one has a clue how to dress it up: three body designs have been turned down by André Citroën. In the spring of 1933, in just one night, Bertoni sculpted a model in three dimensions, something completely new since until then he had always worked with flat drawings. Citroën and his wife are delighted. The Traction Avant, the posthumous work of Mr. de Javel, is already in shape.
From the ruin of André Citroën to the German invasion
But finances are exhausted. A firm supplying flyers claims a large sum. Citroen, you’re broke. He loses the address of his company and becomes a sick man who wanders his factory, the Quai de Javel as a ghost. The firm became controlled by Michelin at the end of 1934, another mentality, and a few months later André Citroën died, the man who thought ahead of everyone, the great player.
One of the first drawings of the 2 CV
Parallel to this gloomy situation, Bertoni works enthusiastically in his artist studio and wins several prizes with his sculptures. The duality of his work as a designer and his facet as a sculptor with works like ‘Los luchadores’ will be a constant in his career. The Citroën firm recovers financially and provides Bertoni with the means to study future models. At the same time, he exhibits his work in exhibitions such as the one at the Carmine Gallery in Paris, together with Giorgio de Chirico.
The German invasion forced to develop these studies in secret. Tireless, in that same period he began his studies in architecture that he would finish, once the war was over, in 1948. It is precisely that year when another of his brilliant creations is presented, the Citroen 2 CV. And in 1955 the revolutionary DS or Shark.
Bertoni’s sketch of the future DS, “the goddess”
The bold and futuristic line of the latter excites in all creative fields. The English architects Alison and Peter Smithson included the DS in the photographs of some of their most iconic works. Alison even wrote ‘AS in DS’, a book based on sketches written and drawn while traversing the English landscape aboard a DS.
In 1957 the DS receives the honorary prize of the Triennale of Art and Aesthetics in Milan. A true consecration for Bertoni, who never stops exhibiting or creating in all areas: in the field of architecture, he patented in 1956 a system for building a monolithic house, a patent under which they will be built in San Luis (United States). thousand single-family houses in just one hundred days.
The Ami 6 and its inverted rear window, the latest creation
His talent as an artist, sculptor, painter and architect was officially recognized when in 1961 André Malraux, Minister of Culture, named him a Knight of Arts and Letters.
His latest creation in the automotive world is the Ami 6 with the rear window in a surprising inverted position. In 1964, when he was working on a new project, a stroke ended the life of this man of a thousand talents.
#Bertoni #sculptor #Quai #Javel