(Wuppertal-Elberfeld 1904–1981 Rutarhof/Carinthia)
‘Hof im Winter’, 1973, monogrammed W. B., oil on canvas, 45.5 x 75 cm, framed, (K)

Illustrated and listed in:
Werner Berg, Gemälde, Verlag Johannes Heyn, Klagenfurt 1994, catalogue raisonné, page 309/913

Provenance:
Private Ownership, Germany

Werner Berg, ’Bekenntnis zum Gegenständlichen’

When I am asked, why I hold onto the object in my painting, I am taken aback and have to confess, that this question has never existed for me. The real artistic decisions I have made stand outside such issues and debates. You will know that after a youth spent in the city, studio work and study I have cultivated the life of a hill farmer with my family. That has nothing to do with Romanticism, and anyone who has attempted to live life like this for such a period of time and has succeeded, knows that there is no harder, more unsentimental form of reality than living on the land without farcical theatricality. This distancing may well, however, really intensify one’s sensibility for, and consciousness of, intellectual decision-making and the events of the day. Owning a heap of manure is not a prerequisite for creativity. This stems always and everywhere solely from an intellectual situation that requires one to work on it. The things that nourish a creative person are not irrelevant, however. Worse than the ‘hubris of life’ is gossip. Such antagonisms create an intense relationship of a very particular kind with one’s comprehension and grasp of reality. The urge to work, the rhythms of the seasons and the very real worries associated with them are far more conducive to artistic creation than they hinder it, even though at times one might curse them... op. cit.