The Catto Gallery
100, Heath Street NW3 1DP London
Tel 0044/-20 7435 6660 Fax 0044/--2074315620
Email art@catto.co.uk
BERNHARD VOGELFLOWERS AND CITYSCAPES 2004
BERNHARD VOGEL, the Austrian water-colourist and etcher was born in Salzburg in 1961. He has attained international fame, not only through his highly-praised townscapes painted in watercolour and created with mixed media but also through the wonderful luminosity of his acclaimed flower paintings, many of which are featured in art books, catalogues and calendars sold around the world. In his book ‘Blumen im Licht’ he explains why he became an artist. A turning point in his life came when he was involved in a bad motorcycle accident.
While recovering he was introduced to watercolours via an arts course with Irma Raphaela Toledo, and fell under the spell. He says, "Painting is a dreamlike excursion out of body and mind. Anyone who has ever experienced this will never readily abandon it". What makes Bernhard’s work so exciting is the perfect balance he achieves between realism and abstraction.
In his architectural paintings, the detail is not only in the close up – the advertising hoarding in Piccadilly Circus, the cranes behind St. Paul’s or Tower Bridge – but also in the far distance, drawing one’s eye across the marvellous skylines and landscapes of London. Describing how he attunes himself to his subject, he says "I am like a cat, that walks up and down apparently without motive, then turns around and around until it sits". Having picked his spot he acclimatizes himself, letting everything – people, cars, light, noise and smell – work on him before picking up his brush. "Apparently trivial details can suddenly become the major theme, the foreground can disappear in favour of the hinterland, or vice versa".
But Bernhard’s highly expressionistic realism is about more than just architecture and detail: it is also about atmosphere and light. He looks, experiments and explores, viz the luminosity and excitement he creates around his flower paintings, suffused with warm ochre glows but at the same time almost threatening to leap right out of the paper. As well as in Holland, there exists in Austria a long-standing tradition of flower painting.
Bernhard’s lush neo-baroque flower arrangements have, in a roundabout way, continued this tradition in a modern mode. Therefore central to this exhibition at The Catto Gallery are the flower pictures and some fascinating ever popular, familiar London scenes. Bernhard Vogel has been showing his paintings in London for fifteen years, attracting new admirers with each new body of work. The Catto Gallery is proud to be part of the Bernhard Vogel tradition.