BERND KOBERLING

born 1938 in Berlin

living and working in Berlin and Iceland

Even in his years spent studying in Berlin, which were subject to influences of informal and abstract

expressionism, Koberling consistently eluded any stylistic classification. And since then his enthusiasm

for experimentation in painting has never left him; he continues to surprise, producing a large painting

called »Painting-Water« after a long lonely night of painting. He stretches canvases himself, he spends

weeks with one of his students drawing theme cycles, or discovers one of his main themes in landscape

paintings of Lapland while oh holiday in the extreme north of that country. Koberling is a Berliner,

a city being, but in the countriyside he discovers an undogmatic muse who cheerfully accompanies him as he

projects his art onto rivers, forests, mountains and skies. He invents new opportunities for abstraction in

landscape painting, something which has a tradition in Berlin - it was Kaiser Wilhelm who brusquely rejecred

Leistikov's forest painting with the comment that he knew »his« forest. Koberling, who is an

enthusiastic angler in his spare time, making his flies himself, is interested in capturing moods which, in a

brief period, conjure up eternity. He does so without pathos or explicitness, with colour and artistic gesture.