Like a vast meteorite field, Bernd Koberling’s colours sweep across the canvas, appearing more as a natural phenomenon than the outcome of artistic intention. Titles such as Tides, Snow Warmth, or Sun Suns serve only to underscore the identity of the guiding spirit behind these paintings: For the natural world is the foundation and quintessence of Koberling’s images. An observation which applies generally to his entire output – from the works of the early 1960s, which were inspired by Scandinavian landscapes and which first garnered him acclaim, to the powerful images of the 1970s and 80s and the abstract and lyrical colour landscapes of recent years.
Bernd Koberling is a quite exceptional painter. A post-modern conservationist and innovator of painterly possibilities in equal measure. Someone who has continually reinvented himself, yet remained true to his lifelong theme: the landscape as a symbol of human existence. Someone who has contributed to the forging of a new painting culture and who, together with the “New Wild Ones”, wrote art history.
Someone who perceives painting as an open-ended field of research, and who begins each work uncertain of where the journey make take him. Someone who gives expression to the universality and timelessness of nature and who, with his paintings – at least according to my reading of his work – embarks upon a journey into eternity. His paintings hold a Utopian potential which expresses itself in the nowhere as everywhere – for Koberling, nature is nowhere as tangible as in the everywhere.
The most comprehensive retrospective of the works of Bernd Koberling to date, this exhibition in the MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst showcases some eighty-five paintings from six decades – the culmination of a life devoted to painting. I am particularly delighted that we in the MKM are for the first time able to unveil more recent and current works, including paintings which Koberling has created especially for the exhibition. They form the heart of the exhibition and deliberately break the chronology of the presentation. With these late paintings, Koberling has opened a new chapter in his oeuvre, which is informed with the knowledge and artistry accrued from half a century of painting. These are images of motion and flux, in which every form bursts into colour and every brushstroke ignites into radiant blossom. And my fervent hope is that the visitors to this exhibition may also lose themselves in these pictorial worlds.
My sincere thanks go in the first instance to Bernd Koberling for his dedicated and close cooperation. I also wish to express my warmest appreciation to our curator Christian Malycha, who has supervised the exhibition and the catalogue with great expertise and passion. I am also deeply indebted to our numerous private and institutional partners for their support and the confidence they have placed in us. My heartfelt gratitude also goes to my team from the MKM and the Foundation for Art and Culture, which has organised and supported the exhibition with unstinting commitment and competence.
And finally I wish to extend my special thanks to Thomas A. Lange, Chairman of the Executive Board of NATIONAL-BANK AG and for many years a friend and patron of the museum. Once again, he has proven himself to be an inspirational partner who, with his commitment, has made this landmark retrospective possible.