Sandro Bedini — Geometric composition in blue (2011) — Mixed media and collage on panel

Between geometry and chance

On a blue surface that recalls both a sky and an undefined space, various white structures cross the composition with an almost architectural precision. Their straight profiles, folds, and shadows contrast violently with a rain of black, pink, and violet splatters that extends in multiple directions.

Sandro Bedini confronts here two opposing ways of constructing an image.

On one side is geometry: clean, calculated, and apparently stable forms. On the other, the gesture: drops, lines, and paint projections whose trajectory retains part of the chance inherent in their execution.

The tension between the two constitutes the true argument of the work.

The white structures do not remain completely integrated into the surface. Constructed through elements of folded and adhered paper, they physically advance toward the viewer and generate real shadows on the background. Painting, collage, and small relief thus meet within the same composition.

The main element crosses the lower area diagonally and seems to extend outside the frame, as if we were observing only a fragment of a much larger structure. Around it, smaller forms appear that repeat the same logic of edges, planes, and volumes.

The blue surface functions as a counterpoint. Far from being uniform, it presents atmospheric variations, lighter areas, and small irregularities that prevent it from being understood as a simple flat background. Upon it, the splatters introduce movement and break any possible rigidity of the geometric construction.

The result is deliberately situated between order and accident, reason and impulse, surface and volume.

Sandro Bedini — From realism to geometric abstraction

Sandro Bedini is an artist linked to Barcelona whose trajectory spans painting, muralism, design, and projects related to urban space.

Trained in Fine Arts with a specialization in engraving, his language underwent a significant transformation from an initially figurative training toward an investigation focused on emptiness and geometric forms. By the beginning of the 2010s, this search had come to occupy a central place in his production.

The artist himself has described his work as a dialogue between geometric structure and that which escapes control. Cubes, polyhedra, and constructed forms represent a rational order that confronts stains, strokes, and pictorial accidents.

The work from 2011 belongs precisely to that moment of development of the language that would characterize much of his later production. It was also made between his solo exhibition at the Centre Cívic Guinardó in 2010 and the Barcelona exhibitions and projects that would consolidate this research during the years immediately following. Le Cool Agenda Barcelona

Real volume on painted surface

One of the most interesting aspects of this piece is that Bedini does not limit himself to representing three-dimensionality.

The white elements are folded in a way that generates authentic faces, edges, and shadows. Depending on the lighting and the point from which the painting is viewed, these shadows change slightly and modify the perception of the composition.

That game introduces a very characteristic ambiguity: we do not know exactly where the painting ends and the object begins.

Against this rigorous geometry, the splatters preserve the physical memory of the act of painting. Some form long, tense lines; others appear as tiny dots scattered across the board.

Control and chance are thus forced to share the same space.

Technical sheet

Author: Sandro Bedini
Title: Geometric composition in blue — descriptive title
Date: 2011
Technique: Mixed media and paper collage on board
Dimensions: 40 × 40 cm
Signature: Signed and dated on the reverse “Sandro Bedini 2011”
Theme: Geometric abstraction
Style: Geometric abstraction / geometric minimalism / abstract gesture
Support: Board
Elements: Paint, splashing, and geometric structures of folded paper adhered to the surface
Presentation: Unframed
Condition: Good general condition. The work retains the three-dimensional paper elements and the pictorial surface. Small signs compatible with its age and material nature are observed. The photographs are part of the condition report.

The Workshop Note — When order is broken

This work has something that front-facing photographs do not fully explain: it is not completely flat.

The white volumes emerge physically from the board while the black and pink paint seems to have been thrown onto and around them. One part of the composition attempts to organize space; the other seems determined to undo it.

And there we find the interest of the Sandro Bedini of these years.

It is not simply a matter of placing geometry on an abstract background, but of confronting two ways of creating: one that calculates every edge and another that accepts what happens at the moment of painting.

Dated 2011, the piece also belongs to a stage especially coherent with the development of the geometric language that would define his production during the following years.