René Bértholo
From Unearthing The Music
René Bértholo (Born in Alhandra, 1935 - died in Vila Nova de Cacela, 2005) was a Portuguese artist who mainly focused on painting and sculpture but had notable forays into other arts, including music.
René Bértholo studied in Lisbon at the António Arroio School of Decorative Arts, and then at the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes, where he studied conservation. He started displaying his pieces while still a student, before moving to an atelier in central Lisbon over a café where he regularly met with other well known Lisbon artists.
In 1957 he married Lourdes Castro and then moved to Munich for a year, where he was also able to present his pieces. He returned to Portugal for a short while before moving to Paris, where he remained for years, including a two-year stint under a grant by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Between 1972 and 1973 he studied electronics in Berlim, and built a series of machines which he presented under the name "Deskoncertos de Mozika". These were sound machine built over the the random electronic programs he wrote for his mobile sculptures, which he described as a "gigantic and ever-growing accumulation of modules which record and transform the sounds of daily life".
It was only in 2001 that he would formally make his music debut, in his one and only album, "Um Argentino no Deserto", which features 18 minimal and aleatoric compositions with musique concrete influences.