Werner Berges: Then and now
24. June - 26. August 2017

Werner Berges
Kopf mit Profil, 2016
mixed media
31,5 × 23,6 inches
(80 × 60 cm)
Unikat

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Werner Berges - Kopf mit Profil, 2016, mixed media

Blick in die Ausstellung

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Werner Berges: Then and now

Opening weekend: June 24th and 25th, 2017, 11 am - 6 pm.

A model's dignity

Fashion and rebellion, elegance and recalcitrance, sheath dresses and protest culture shape the micro cosmos in which Werner Berges' early work developed in the 1960's - an era with artistic styles that are currently being rediscovered by the international art market. His early work evolves in the passionate confrontation with motifs, formal finesse and the characteristic infatuation with color typical of that time. The German painter and Pop Art pioneer, however, doesn't belong to those who vehemently declare war on the establishment: "I was always convinced" said Berges, "that one can't achieve anything politically with art and political statements are by no means art's sole purpose."

He would have hardly been invited to this year's very political and as a result ultimately aesthetically impoverished documenta. At the same time his commitment to an epicurean art concept appears almost rebellious these days. Berges has been successfully defying the mainstream to this day. "For me", he reveals, "making art primarily has to do with pleasure. I am a passionate painter." That is how his variation of an art movement known as Pop Art developed: Berges Pop.

- Dorothee Baer-Bogenschütz