Bernd Berner

Bernd Berner (born September 24, 1930 in Bergedorf , † July 12, 2002 in Stuttgart ) was a German painter and graphic artist.

Bernd Berner completed a training as a lithographer . The artistic break caused by National Socialism also prompted young Bernd Berner to search for new artistic expressions, initially turning to the French Cubists, in particular Fernand Léger. When Berner Baumer's 1947 book “The unknown in art" fell into the hands, it was for him a revelation that influenced the young artist significantly. In 1952 he moved to Stuttgart, where he met with Willi Baumeister. His works from this period are entirely abstract and clearly marked by furrows and scriptural structures. Between 1956 and 1958 Baumeister's direct influence as well as the affinity for Tachism and Informel lost more and more importance. The colors in Berner's works were combined into fields of organized pictorial structure. In dealing with non-objective painting of European Modernism in 1959, he defined the concept of “area space" (overwriting and overpainting, which leads to a dense network and thus give the area a certain amount of space) for the majority of his works. He kept this concept throughout his life. From 1960 he exhibited internationally. Solo exhibitions took place mainly in Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy. From 1971 to 1994 he held a professorship for painting at the University of Applied Sciences in Pforzheim. His studios were in Stuttgart and temporarily in Bern and Paris. Together with Klaus Jürgen-Fischer, Eduard Micus, Erwin Bechtold and Rolf-Gunther Dienst, Berner founds the SYN group of artists in 1965, who represent the idea of ??a holistic art beyond the definition of a formalism. The group disbanded in 1970, however.

Works by Bernd Berner are in numerous private and public art collections, including the Thompson Collection / Pittsburgh, USA; the collection of the Villa Romana ; the collection of the Federal Republic of Germany / Berlin; the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart ; the Duke Anton Ulrich Museum / Brunswick; the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe as well as the Nationalgalerie Berlin and the Kunsthalle Mannheim.

Bernd Berner was a member of the Deutscher Künstlerbund and exhibited there as regularly as in the exhibitions of the Darmstadt Sezession or the annual large art exhibitions in the Haus der Kunst in Munich.

His studios were in Stuttgart and temporarily in Pieterlen, a municipality in the canton of Berne / Switzerland and Paris / France. In 2002 Bernd Berner dies in Stuttgart.

His artistic estate is located in Cologne at VAN HAM Art Estate. The documentary estate is in the German Art Archive in Nuremberg.