Influenced by the metaphysical work of Giorgio de Chirico, spread in France by the surrealists, he painted El torero calvo and Toledo y el religioso or El fraile. Berni’s evolution could be followed in the works he submitted to the Salón Nacional: El puesto (1925), Sepúlveda (1926), La plaza de la aldea (1927) and Fraile (1928) witnessed his abandoning the post-impressionism of the Argentine landscapes, replaced by elements deriving from cubism, expressionism –tempered by means of the coming back to the appearances of the “return to order”–, or through surreal approximations.

He traveled to Madrid and exhibited suburban landscapes, bullfighters portraits and pencil and ink drawings at Casa Nancy. The press highlighted his “cultured predisposition and preference for the modern” and compared his drawings with those of Picasso. In this city’s El Ateneo, Berni attended a lecture by Filippo Tomasso Marinetti –a futurist leader–, which impressed him strongly.

He participated in Primer Salón de Pintura Moderna Argentina in Amigos del Arte, next to Horacio Butler, Héctor Basaldúa, Aquiles Badi, Lino Enea Spilimbergo y Juan Del Prete.