(Wuppertal-Elberfeld 1904–1981St. Veit at Jauntal/Carinthia)
‘Weißer Hahn und Malve’, 1960, monogrammed WB, oil on canvas, 65 x 75 cm, framed

Werner Berg, Gemälde, Verlag Johannes Heyn, Klagenfurt 1994, p.287, catalogue raisonné no 604 (with ill.)

Provenance:
Private Collection, Germany

... Later, after the end of the exhibition (Moderna Galerija Ljubljana-Major Werner Berg Exhibition), Werner Berg explained: ‘In war, we teach nations to destroy and to despise one another. After the war, the diplomats breakfast with one another again, and from their luggage art is brought out as third-level prop, as a ‘Measurure towards the peaceful understanding between nations’ and so on and so forth. We know this slime and its official representatives well enough. No, no, no! Art is not an instrument of diplomacy but proto-language of humankind.
Werner Berg, typescript 2.11.1958

... The following years of near undisturbed continuous creation were interrupted only by the preparations for an exhibition in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich in 1961. The head of this exhibition, Hans Konrad Röthel, had visited Werner Berg before at Rutarhof to make a decision about the exhibits.’That it should be he, the exaggerated risk-taker, to make this my exhibition, is a curiosity, and I do not delude myself in the slightest, but now I want to and must put everything behind me with dignity. I don’t say ‘afterwards the flood,’ but ‘afterwards, work’ and I yearn radically for nothing more than continued, inward concentration.‘
Werner Berg in a letter to Adele Kaindl,17.11.1957...

Wieland Schmied, now editor at the publishing house Insel Verlag in Frankfurt, liked to reminisce about his times at Rutarhof: ‘For a few days, Thomas Bernhard visited. He thinks very highly of you, and we always talk about you. My dream is now to write a book, a monograph, about you and your work. The example of your art and your life were and are important and decisive for me in my whole existence.’ In 1962, Wieland Schmied and Thomas Bernhard together visited Werner Berg at Rutarhof. When the dinner conversation turned to abstract art, Werner Berg said of the green bean salad which they were all enjoying: ‘These beans are not abstract, they are concrete, for there are no abstract beans.’
Texts from: Harald Scheicher, Werner Berg

Werner Berg, Gemälde, Verlag Johannes Heyn, Klagenfurt 1994, p.287, catalogue raisonné no 604 (with ill.)

Provenance:
Private Collection, Germany

... Later, after the end of the exhibition (Moderna Galerija Ljubljana-Major Werner Berg Exhibition), Werner Berg explained: ‘In war, we teach nations to destroy and to despise one another. After the war, the diplomats breakfast with one another again, and from their luggage art is brought out as third-level prop, as a ‘Measurure towards the peaceful understanding between nations’ and so on and so forth. We know this slime and its official representatives well enough. No, no, no! Art is not an instrument of democracy but proto-language of humankind.
Werner Berg, typescript 2.11.1958

... The following years of near undisturbed continuous creation were interrupted only by the preparations for an exhibition in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich in 1961. The head of this exhibition, Hans Konrad Röthel, had visited Werner Berg before at Rutarhof to make a decision about the exhibits.’That it should be he, the exaggerated risk-taker, to make this my exhibition, is a curiosity, and I do not delude myself in the slightest, but now I want to and must put everything behind me with dignity. I don’t say ‘afterwards the flood,’ but ‘afterwards, work’ and I yearn radically for nothing more than continued, inward concentration.‘
Werner Berg in a letter to Adele Kaindl,17.11.1957...

Wieland Schmied, now editor at the publishing house Insel Verlag in Frankfurt, liked to reminisce about his times at Rutarhof: ‘For a few days, Thomas Bernhard visited. He thinks very highly of you, and we always talk about you. My dream is now to write a book, a monograph, about you and your work. The example of your art and your life were and are important and decisive for me in my whole existence.’ In 1962, Wieland Schmied and Thomas Bernhard together visited Werner Berg at Rutarhof. When the dinner conversation turned to abstract art, Werner Berg said of the green bean salad which they were all enjoying: ‘These beans are not abstract, they are concrete, for there are no abstract beans.’
Texts from: Harald Scheicher, Werner Berg