Ben Berns

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Ben Berns (born May 15, 1936 in Ginneken , North Brabant , Netherlands ; † February 7, 2007 in Fairfax , Virginia , USA ) was a Dutch painter , graphic artist and sculptor .

Life

Ben Berns left school when he was fifteen to work in a printing company. From 1949 he took lessons from the painter Jan Stroosma (1928–1983) in Enschede . From 1952 to 1953 he trained as a lithographer at the graphic school in Amsterdam . He then went to Paris to work in Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 . In the 1960s he taught lithography at the Pratt Institute in New York. In the mid-1960s he went to North Carolina to work as a teacher at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro .

In 1971 he received a Guggenheim scholarship . Until the early 1970s he worked as a master printer for the Universal Limited Art Edition (ULAE) in West Islip , New York . Together with the artists Helen Frankenthaler ( Persian Garden, 1965–66 ), Jasper Johns ( Recent Still , 1965–66; Two Maps II , 1966) and Robert Motherwell ( West Islip , 1970; Samurai 1971; The Black Douglas Stone , 1971) he printed lithographic editions there.

In 1968 he was a participant in the 4th documenta curated by Arnold Bode in Kassel in the Ambience department with four tall, rectangular objects (" neon cubes ") made of wood, plastic, fiberglass and aluminum, but each equipped with neon tubes . In addition to his minimalist sculptures, he became known in the 1980s for his calm, detailed drawings and paintings in which he depicted hyper-realistic landscapes.

Works by Berns are represented in the permanent collections of important museums, including the British Museum in London, Brooklyn College, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, North Carolina Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institute , Wadsworth Atheneum, the Walker Art Center or the Weatherspoon Art Gallery. Exhibitions by the artist have been seen in New York, Denmark , Germany and the Netherlands .

Berns died of lung cancer at the age of 70, he was married to Debra Berns and had a son.

Literature and Sources

  • Exhibition catalog for the IV. Documenta: IV. Documenta. International exhibition ; Catalog: Volume 1: (Painting and Sculpture); Volume 2: (Graphics / Objects); Kassel 1968
  • Harald Kimpel , Karin Stengel: documenta IV 1968 international exhibition - A photographic reconstruction (series of publications from the documenta archive); Bremen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86108-524-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stephanie Terenzio, Dorothy C. Belknap: The Prints of Robert Motherwell: A Catalog Raisonné 1943-1984 , Hudson Press, 1984, p. 41
  2. ↑ Siri Engberg, Joan Banach, Robert Motherwell: Robert Motherwell: the Complete Prints 1940–1991: Catalog Raisonne , Walker Art Center, Hudson Hills, 2003, ISBN 978-1-55595-163-4
  3. ↑ Ben Berns in the Walker Art Center  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / collections.walkerart.org  
  4. ↑ Bern Berns: Landscapes (Spanierman Gallery)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / spaniermanmodern.info  
personal data
SURNAME Berns, Ben
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch painter, printmaker and sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH May 15, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Ginneken , North Brabant , Netherlands
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 2007
Place of death Fairfax , Virginia , USA