Julio Bertrand Vidal

Julio Bertrand Vidal (* 1888 in Iquique ; † 1918 in Santiago de Chile ) was a Chilean architect, photographer and draftsman.

The son of the engineer and geographer Alejandro Bertrand Huillard grew up in Santiago. There he attended the Instituto Nacional , headed by Diego Barros Arana , a friend of his father's, until 1906 . In 1905 his father gave him a stereo camera with which he took around 1,800 photos over the course of his life.

In 1907 he went to Paris with his parents and studied there at the École Spéciale d'Architecture . During this time he made several trips through France, Switzerland, Holland, Italy and other countries, which he documented with photos, drawings and travel diaries. In 1910 he graduated as an architect and was awarded the Prix ​​de l'Union coloniale française .

In 1911 he returned to Chile. There, his first assignment as an architect was a group of houses on calle Matucana . Soon after, he joined the office of the architect Émile Jéquier , who designed the Palacio de Bellas Artes . In 1914 he founded an architecture society with Pedro Prado , from which the Los Diez group emerged in 1916 , with members such as Juan Francisco González , Manuel Magallanes Moure , Julio Ortiz de Zárate , Augusto d'Halmar , Alfonso Leng and Acario Cotapos , who shaped was the cultural history of Chile in the early 20th century. He created workshops for painting and photography in the group and was involved in the design of the Casa de Los Diez .

In 1917 Senator Augusto Bruna commissioned him to build a palace on Parque Forestal, known as Palacio Bruna, which was later used as the US embassy in Chile and finally as the seat of the Chamber of Commerce. While working on the building of the palace, Bertrand fell ill with tuberculosis, to which he succumbed in 1918 at the age of thirty.

Web links

Commons : Julio Bertrand  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Memoria Chilena - Julio Bertrand Vidal (1888-1918)