Provincial landscapes and countrymen, with their mores and their circumstances, became a presence in the work of Berni from the beginning of his production. By late ‘40s and early ‘50s his frequent journeys to Santiago del Estero to meet painter Lino Enea Spilimbergo, who lived in Tucumán since 1948, put him in touch with the country’s Northwest. Arid plains and quebracho (a sort of breakax) woods added to the pampas and the sierras in his landscapes. These series were dedicated to the woodcutters who painfully demounted a non renewable forest and to fleeting farm workers (“swallow workers”) who, due to scarcity of work in a poor and ill-exploited area, had to emigrate to several zones of the country following the routes of seeding and harvest.