(Wuppertal-Elberfeld 1904–1981 St. Veit i. Jauntal / Carinthia)
Mohnkapseln mit Vogelscheuche (Poppy seed capsules with scarecrow), 1953, monogrammed W. B., handwritten note on the reverse of the original stretcher about the date of the primer (“III / 53”), the canvas and the composition of the primer, oil on canvas, 100 x 40 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private Collection, Austria, since the 1950s

We are grateful to Dr. Harald Scheicher for his help in cataloguing this work and for the inclusion in the catalogue raisonné under the number 423b.

“The objects form a very special kind of forceps for understanding and grasping reality.”

Werner Berg

Intense colors of blue, green and violet contrasting with yellow, red and pink are Werner Berg’s preferred colors in his later oeuvre after 1945. Integrated into strict formal boundaries, colors lose their purely expressive character and become a sculptural, symbolic form themselves. In his pictures of flowers in the field, the artist also opted for an extreme close-up view and a perspective that moves from bottom to top.

In this newly discovered painting, this also lends the flowers and as yet unblossomed poppy capsules something monumental and an appealing dialectic between immediacy and distance. The conclusion with a broom covered by a headscarf lends a humorous accent to the already endearing subject matter.