Abstract works associated with landscapes first assumed an important place in Hubert Berke’s oeuvre in the 1960s. He travelled extensively, including to North Africa and Syria, immediately after the Second World War. He transferred these new impressions of unfamiliar countries and their moods into series of works which he named after the places he visited. They were mostly created from memory although a few were based on smaller sketches and watercolours he made during his travels.
The paintings of his trip to Syria are characterized on the one hand by Berke’s experience of nature in the desert, and on the other by his encounter with the country’s incredibly rich history. Berke experimented with different techniques: in Syria I, he scratched fine contours into the vertical-format landscape, whereas in Syria II, he chose coloured pencils for the hatchings and networks of lines, reminiscent of cartography, with which he covered the picture surface. He drew inspiration for the steep vertical formats of the two paintings from the narrow, tall formats of Chinese scroll paintings.
Donated to the Reinhard & Sonja Ernst Foundation by the artists community of heirs
Abstract works associated with landscapes first assumed an important place in Hubert Berke’s oeuvre in the 1960s. Immediately after the Second World War, he travelled to Spain, North Africa and Paris. He later stayed on Sylt and took trips to Provence, the Netherlands, southern Italy, Crete and Syria. He transferred these new impressions of unfamiliar countries and their moods into series of works which he named after the places he visited. They were mostly created from memory although a few were based on smaller sketches and watercolours he made during his travels.
The paintings of his trip to Syria are characterized on the one hand by Berke’s experience of nature in the desert, and on the other by his encounter with the country’s incredibly rich history. Berke experimented with different techniques such as scratching, scraping and scribing in an attempt to translate nature’s inherent processes into a visual form. In Syria I, for example, he scratched fine contours into the vertical-format landscape, whereas in Syria II, he chose coloured pencils for the hatchings and networks of lines, reminiscent of cartography, with which he covered the picture surface. He drew inspiration from the narrow, tall formats of Chinese scroll paintings for the steep vertical formats of the two works.
The early acquisition of works on paper by Karl Otto Götz and Hubert Berke in the mid-1980s laid the foundation for the current collection of Reinhard Ernst, whose favorite painters include Helen Frankenthaler and Hubert Berke.
