(Wuppertal-Elberfeld 1904–1981 St. Veit in Jauntal/Carinthia)
“Schlafende in der Bahn”, 1978, monogrammed W. B, oil on canvas, 80 x 65 cm, framed

Illustrated and registered:
Werner Berg Gemälde, mit einem Werkverzeichnis von Harald Scheicher, Verlag Johannes Heyn, 1994, p. 327/1168

Provenance:
Galerie Würthle, Vienna (label on reverse)
Collection Leopold II (label on reverse)
Private Collection, Vienna

Rainer Zimmermann in a letter to Werner Berg, 12.5.1978 after a visit to the Rutarhof:
... “I can still see very clearly the incredibly delicate images from the last few weeks, these silhouettes of people in the windows of trains and their experience of transience, your ‘minimal art’. I know that here, at a distance from the art business of our century but with a very fine awareness for the actual needs of our epoch, a work has been created that no one with an interest in the art of our time can ignore. Your great subject ‘Lower Carinthia’ has a represen-tative meaning here (the documentary dimension of your pictures has an additional value that should be gratefully accepted); here, as with every work of art that lives up to its claim, it is about nothing less than the mystery of our existence; and every new view of space and of the things in space and of the light on the things in space is nothing other than a wonder that has become realised, that all this is, and is real, and is more real than all the thinking and hoping.”

from: Harald Scheicher. Werner Berg. Wirklichkeit im Bild-haften. Werner Berg Museum Bleiburg/Pliberk, Hirmer Verlag, 2012, p. 390