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.