Bernd Berner
Ohne Titel
/ Untitled, 1968
Oil on canvas
95 × 85 cm
signed and dated on the reverse
(BERNEB/M 45)
€ 8.000
In 1965, Bernd Berner, together with Klaus-Jürgen Fischer, Eduard Micus, Erwin Bechtold and Rolf-Gunter Dienst, was one of the founders of the artist group SYN, which - not without the influence of international art - was dedicated to a holistic art and formed itself against the post-war currents: Informel was just as suspect to the protagonists as Concrete Art. Inspired by Arakawa, Jasper Johns, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland and Kumi Sugai, they sought the SYN thesis of polar, dialectical or dualistic elements. They were not concerned with harmonization, however, but with absolute pictorial tension. In Bernd Berner's work, constructed forms appear next to organic forms, oscillating dynamics next to colorful fringing in the color bands, the relativization of the edges in contrast to the picture frame. The image-dominant, but already vibrating monochrome is energetically charged, especially in his SYN years, by colorful arc shapes placed enigmatically in the picture. After about 20 joint exhibitions, the group disbanded after five years in 1970. Berner then took back the borrowings from Pop Art and found a more meditative form of enclosing and delimiting his color spaces.