(Wuppertal-Elberfeld 1904–1981 St. Veit im Jauntal/Carinthia)
“Asternstrauß auf Kärntnerdecke”, 1948, monogrammed
W. B., oil on canvas, 84 x 70 cm, framed

Werner Berg, Gemälde, Verlag Johannes Heyn, Klagenfurt 1994,
p. 265, catalogue raisonné no. 328, with ill.

Provenance:
Private Collection, Carinthia

If I am asked why I adhere to the object in my painting, then, taken aback, I have to admit that this “why” has never existed for me. The really artistic decisions exist beyond such questions and doubts...
...Expressionism once gave me impetus and stimulus. From the explosive and imploring, from the rambling, threatening, cloud-filled darkness, all these German perils, the tendency was more and more towards composure, order, clarity. The possibilities for a painter who thus remained captured by the objective are completely unlimited. In the end it always comes back to talent and being blessed, to the strength, the intensity and the intelligence of that which is created. If they fail, it is the fault of the subject, the painter, and never that of the object, the thing.
Werner Berg/Bekenntnis zum Gegenständlichen (Acknowledgement of the objective)

Werner Berg’s painting is noteworthy from a formal-critical viewpoint between the years 1947 to 1949 because within it a relationship between line-as surface contour-and colour announces itself, a relationship which persists and which is subjected to a constant purification. The purpose of line, as contour, is to precisely define the type of figuration, and to stand in opposition to the plane as an element creating tension (Kandinsky: Point and Line to Plane). That which is found in the work of Gauguin, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Gabriele Münter as an attempt, and which is still conceived graphically, here becomes a deliberately applied counterpart to the surface area colour. And this responds to the contour, in that it derives the modelling-or “modulation of colour” as Cézanne discovered-from its sensitivelly drawn course. Thus at the same time it abstracts from the “objective colour”, so that the imaginatively determined psychological atmosphere that the picture should convey is expressed as clearly as possible.
Heimo Kuchling/Stil-und formkritische Bemerkungen zum Werkverzeichnis
All texts from the literature cited.