(Wuppertal-Elberfeld 1904–1981Rutarhof/Carinthia) ‘Wartende’, 1973, monogrammed WB, oil on canvas, 63 x 89 cm, framed, (K)

Illustrated and listed:
Werner Berg / Gemälde, Verlag Johannes Heyn, Klagenfurt 1994, page 310, catalogue raisonné no . 932

Provenance:
Private ownership, Vienna - direct from the artist

... In landscape painting as well Werner Berg structured the space primarily in layers; his late work is executed in some instances almost exclusively in layers. As a rule, his landscape painting and his works depicting the figure and landscape are a combination of layered space and elements reaching into space, such as pathways, railway tracks, expanses of ice or fences. By means of these visual elements which recede into the depths of the canvas from the upper visual level using perspective, he achieves an ambivalence between the layered space and the perspectival space. Combining both forms of representation within the visual space is a feature of the entire oeuvre of Werner Berg and is typical of a considerable percentage of his iconography, above all people on pathways and, indeed, landscape pictures.
The combination of these spatial, organising principles - a synthesis of layered space and perspectival space, as wielded by Werner Berg particularly in his late work, is also evident in the similar approach, albeit other forms employed by Albin Egger-Lienz. The latter developd (above all in his late works) complex compositions, built around, amongst other things, a synthesis of spatial forms. Egger-Lienz arranges groups of people in tiers together with space-consuming architectonic elements primarily in interior spaces (...) Both painters developed a great freedom, following Marées, in their treatment of the possibilities afforded by the depiction of visual space and they organise it to suit, and correspond with, their own subject matter and formal ideas. Other parallels in their early work have been noted. Egger-Lienz is, however, the Austrian artist with the closest links in terms of his artistic approach, in comparison with others, to the theme of pictorial space and the construction of form in general. What Eggers said about his art applies just as well to that of Werner Berg, “.... I do not paint peasants, I paint forms...”
(excerpt from the foreword by Trude Polley, in Werner Berg, Galerie der Stadt Bleiburg, Stiftung Werner Berg 1997).