Bernard Aubertin — Rebus Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea, Florence, 1977

Exhibition invitation card
Rebus Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea, Via della Fortezza 9/r, Florence
Opening: 16 December 1977, 21:30

Red letterpress-style typography on textured cream handmade-style paper
10 × 22 cm · Single sheet, printed recto only; verso blank

Condition: good vintage condition. Light age toning, minor corner wear, and handling marks. The marks remain part of the record: evidence of circulation, storage, handling, and transfer.

Original invitation issued for a solo exhibition by Bernard Aubertin at Rebus Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea, Florence, opening 16 December 1977 at 21:30. The card announces the artist’s presence at the opening and notes that a catalogue would be available through the gallery.

There is no image, no reproduction, no attempt to explain the work. Only a name, a date, a gallery, a city. The invitation functions almost as an administrative monochrome: red text on cream paper, reduced to the minimum information required for an exhibition to occur. The handmade-style paper and letterpress-like red typography give the card a fine-press quality, placing it closer to a small printed object than a disposable gallery notice. Red becomes both information and field.

By 1977, Aubertin’s work was already established within the broader history of European monochrome, post-minimal, and ZERO-related practice — in dialogue with Yves Klein, Otto Piene, and the wider postwar movement toward reduction as both image and event.

Rebus Gallery material appears infrequently on the secondary market, and Aubertin ephemera from the 1970s surfaces far less often than later catalogues and publications. A retained exhibition object from a specific event in Florence, never intended to survive beyond its immediate function.

Shipping and handling included.