Bernd Berner

(Bergedorf 1930 - 2002 Stuttgart)

1930 born in Hamburg
1948/51 Trained as a lithographer in Hamburg with great enthusiasm for French Cubism and Fernand Léger.
1952 moved to Stuttgart. Berner is a great admirer of Willi Baumeister, whose book "Das Unbekannte in der Kunst" (The Unknown in Art), published in 1947, will have a lasting influence on Berner's art.
Works as a lithographer at various art schools
At the end of the 1950s he created his first colour fields, the so-called Flächenräume (surface spaces).
1965 Together with Klaus Jürgen-Fischer, Eduard Micus, Erwin Bechtold and Rolf-Gunter Dienst, Berner founds the artists' group SYN in 1965, which advocates the idea of a holistic art beyond the definition of a formalism
1967 Berner receives the Villa Romana Prize and goes to Florence for a year
Numerous exhibitions at home and abroad
1970 Dissolution of the SYN group
1971-1994 Professor of painting at the University of Applied Sciences for Design in Pforzheim
1973 artistic residency at the Cité des Arts in Paris
Berner is a member of the Deutscher Künstlerbund and exhibits regularly there as well as in the exhibitions of the Darmstädter Sezession or the annual Große Kunstausstellungen in the Haus der Kunst in Munich
Berner lives and works in studios in Stuttgart, Switzerland and Paris
2002 Bernd Berner dies in Stuttgart

The painter Bernd Berner is regarded as an important representative of abstraction in German post-war modernism. He was intensively concerned with the theme of "surface - colour - space" and initially worked on scriptural condensations in the context of German Informel. From the early 1960s onwards, he developed the concept of "surface space" for his works. Through nuanced and differentiated superimposition and condensation of colour surfaces, a spatial depth is created. The focus is on the perception of the painterly pictorial space and its structure.

In his late work in the 1990s, disturbances and traces create a spatial dynamic and vibration.
Born in Hamburg, Bernd Berner moved to Stuttgart in 1952 after training as a lithographer and came into contact with Willi Baumeister. Baumeister's art, as well as that of Fernand Léger, influenced his self-taught exploration of painting. In 1965 he co-founded the artists' group "SYN", which existed until 1970. In 1967 he was awarded the Villa Romana Prize and lived in Florence for a year. From 1971 to 1993 he teaches as a professor of painting at the Fachhochschule für Gestaltung in Pforzheim. In 1973 he was awarded a scholarship for a stay at the Cité des Arts in Paris. In addition to his studio in Stuttgart, the artist maintains a studio in Pieterlen, Switzerland, and from 1985 a studio in Paris. Numerous publications with texts, such as by Eugen Gomringer, appear on the occasion of exhibitions in galleries and museums. Bernd Berner died in Stuttgart in 2002.

Bernd Berner is represented in the following museums and institutions, among others::

- Museum Bochum
- Duke Anton Ulrich Museum, Brunswick
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Freiburg
- Karl-Ernst Osthaus Museum, Hagen
- Palatinate Gallery, Kaiserslautern
- Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen
- Mannheim Art Gallery
- State Museum Oldenburg
- State Gallery Stuttgart
- Museum of the City of Ulm