(Elberfeld 1904–1981 Rutarhof/Carinthia) ‘Farming couple at Candlemas’, 1963, monogrammed W. B., oil on canvas, 55 x 75 cm, framed, (K)

Illustrated and listed in: Werner Berg/Gemälde, Verlag Johannes Heyn, Klagenfurt 1994, p. 291, catalogue raisonné no. 666 – illustrated in reverse. Provenance: private ownership, Germany - acquired direct from the artist Heimo Kuchling/Stil- und formkritische Bemerkungen zum Werkverzeichnis ... In 1956 Berg visited extremely significant exhibitions by two important, yet diametrically opposed painters: Max Beckmann in Zurich and Juan Gris in Basle. As he would later prefer Paula Modersohn-Becker, intent as she was to achieve the most intense concentration, over the emotionally out-of-control Nolde, when in Munich, so he would prefer Gris over Beckmann when in Switzerland. Although it was clear to him that Beckmann’s work had thematic and formal diversity and vitality, which meant that he appeared as a giant, he recognised in the work of Gris, who was following an extremely narrow path, this concentration, a tendency towards formal clarity and an unbending consistency, after which he himself was striving. Werner Berg, for whom such intimations, the encoded and grotesque were anything other than strange, was more fascinated by the work of Juan Gris than that of Beckmann. On the one hand because it was more distant from his own art than that of the great German, and on the other hand, because it was a perfect crystallisation of the essential formal themes of thesis, antithesis, repetition and conveying of figure and coloration, such as had never been achieved by any other painter of his time or since. In addition the Spaniard’s pictures captivated the viewer by being part of a culture of painting which could not be outdone. In their work, Werner Berg and Beckmann were exponents of worlds which, however much they contrasted with one another, were authentic. This was the impetus for Werner Berg to remain in his world. Gris, on the contrary, let it be known that subject matter, the outcome upon which each individual work rests and the imagination which is triggered by it, could only lead to an artistic goal, if it were cleansed of the scum of reality external to art, compressed, and given form, and if a high degree of pictorial order and thus formal clarity were achieved. This became an ever more essential benchmark for Werner Berg himself and thus is the key benchmark for the contemporary classification of his works... From the above-mentioned catalogue raisonné