Bernd Koberling | Solo-exhibition | Contemporary Fine Arts (CFA Berlin) | 01.03.-19.04.2025

until 19.04. | #4622ARTatBerlin | Contemporary Fine Arts currently shows a Solo-exhibition by the artist Bernd Koberling.

As one of the few native Berliners (born in 1938), Koberling has never shown any interest in the themes of the big city. His northern landscapes and sceneries are created in Berlin, from which he repeatedly escapes by travelling to Iceland, Scotland and Lapland. Volcanic spaces, block lava rock, cormorants, breeders, landscapes, beach workers, whales and metamorphoses – these themes seem to be far removed from the reality of the big city. He contrasts the dominant urban world with the self-contained, always self-explanatory reality of nature. It is the immediate nature that can be experienced better in the Arctic regions than in the areas that have been transformed by man.

And yet: doesn’t a painter today pay homage to escapism by depicting poppies, cormorants, whales or estuaries in the big city? The question is directed at the questioner himself, because it could be that escapism is the only salvation for people trying to survive in the complex metropolis. Koberling therefore affirms conscious escapism; the ivory tower also has a positive function, insofar as it offers individuals the chance to get closer to the elemental again.

Bernd Koberling, “Klatschmohn”,1975, Oil on canvas, 142 x 171 cm

The painter Bernd Koberling can look back on 60 years of his own artistic development – a period in which the prevailing ideas about art have changed dramatically and yet have also remained constant. Visual art is an essential arena for the formation and impact of cultural memory, and it works in the sense of visualising ideas and emotions that transcend our everyday topicality. Its aura is able to intervene more deeply in space and time. A work of art is caught between novelty and universality; the artist must find his or her own language in order to be able to fulfil these two poles. The confrontation with tradition and the present cannot take place without conflict and interruption, but only by overcoming resistance and a simultaneously respectful and disrespectful attitude towards the predecessors. For the generation of artists to which Bernd Koberling belongs, the experience of total destruction and the complete relativisation of cultural values, caused by twelve years of fascism and the Second World War, has become particularly defining.

Bernd Koberling, “Blütenschuss”, 1988, Öl on canvas 225 x 320 cm

Bernd Koberling decided to become an artist in 1957 and went to the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin in 1958, where Max Kaus became his teacher – a second-generation Expressionist. After the war, Karl Hofer had rebuilt the academy and its orientation was based on the expressionism and classical modernism of the years before the Nazi dictatorship. In the same year, Koberling saw the major exhibition ‘The New American Painting’ there, which became a key experience not only for him. An entire generation of artists was influenced by this travelling exhibition. This elaborate project fitted seamlessly into a campaign in which the new art in Western Europe was dominated in those years by the slogan of ‘abstraction as a world language’, which was positioned as a central metaphor for the culture of the liberal Western world against the socialist dictatorships in the USSR’s sphere of influence. Even without taking into account these political implications, which were not openly propagated at the time, the impact of the new American painting on display here was a shock for many young artists that was as liberating as it was unsettling.

Bernd Koberling, “Blocklava-Tagtraum”, 1980, Oil on canvas, 190 x 245 cm

In 1969 he took part in the highly acclaimed exhibition series ‘14 x 14’ at the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, in 1972 in ‘Szene Rhein-Ruhr’ in Essen and in the presentation ‘The Berlin Scene’ in London organised by Christos Joachimides. This was followed in 1975 by the group exhibition ‘8 in Berlin’ in Edinburgh and in 1978 by ‘13° East. Eleven Artists Working in Berlin’ at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. In the meantime, Reinhard Onnasch had put together a collection of 13 paintings and presented them in 1978 as part of the exhibition ‘Aspekte der 60er Jahre. From the Reinhard Onnasch Collection’ to the Nationalgalerie Berlin on permanent loan.

When the wave of so-called ‘wild painting’ was triggered in the 1980s, it was hardly surprising that Bernd Koberling’s work was also re-evaluated.

Bernd Koberling, “Über dem Horizont”, 1982/83, Oil on canvas, 85 x 110 cm

His participation in the exhibition ‘A New Spirit in Painting’ organised by Christos Joachimides, Norman Rosenthal and Nicholas Serota at the Royal Academy in London in 1981 marked the beginning of a series of comprehensive exhibitions in which Koberling was presented internationally – ‘Berlin – la rage de peindre’ 1982 at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne, ‘New Painting in Germany’ 1982 at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, ‘New Figuration – Contemporary Art from Germany’ 1982 at the Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery Los Angeles, ‘Zeitgeist’ 1982 at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, ‘La Métropole retrouvée’ 1983 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, ‘Origen y Visión’ 1984 at the Centre Cultural de la Caixa de Pen-sions Barcelona, ‘An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture’ 1984 at the Museum of Modern Art New York.

Bernd Koberling, “Windstelle”, 1992, Oil on canvas, 250 x 250 cm

From 1976, Bernd Koberling held guest lectureships at the academies in Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Berlin, and from 1981 to 1988 he taught as a professor, initially at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg, and then from 1988 until his retirement at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. ‘For him, inner necessity, whatever it might bring forth, was the decisive drive […], not false epigonism. This necessity, which he follows uncompromisingly to this day, is what he instilled in his students and they admire him for it,’ wrote art historian Eugen Blume on the occasion of a group exhibition in honour of Koberling at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, where his works were exhibited together with works by ten of his students. This characterisation accurately describes Bernd Koberling’s artistic approach, and it still determines the extraordinary quality of his works today. To this day, he continues to work while travelling extensively in the far north, in the undisturbed natural surroundings. His work is pleasantly free from the issues of the day and ostensibly topical discourses. His art is characterised by great seriousness, humility and strength.

Title image caption: Bernd Koberling, “Spannweiten”, 1983, Oil on canvas, 150 x 140 cm, Courtesy CFA (Contemporary Fine Arts)