Siep van den Berg - collage + newspaper clipping: 4 blue 1 - 1984 (signed!)

Collage/newspaper clipping by Siep v/d Berg from 1984. Title: 4 blue 1. The work is signed in pencil in the lower right. The authenticity of the work offered is fully guaranteed. A certificate of authenticity can be emailed upon request.

Upon purchase, the work can be collected in 's-Gravenzande (near The Hague (Scheveningen), Rotterdam, and Delft, and just 5 minutes from the beach). The collection period, with advance payment, is very generous, meaning the buyer can collect the work weeks or even months later and, if possible, combine it with a visit to one of the aforementioned cities or the beach. We can also ship the work with PostNL. Our shipping days are Tuesdays and Thursdays.

As the son of a blacksmith, Van den Berg attended trade school. He became a house painter, but also made paintings. In 1930, he visited the Frisian painter Jacob Ydema to discuss his ambitions; on that occasion, Ydema made several sketches of him. From 1930 to 1933, he attended evening classes in drawing and painting at the Minerva Academy in Groningen. His teachers included Jan Altink. It was also during this time that he met the Frisian painter Gerrit Benner. After this training, he founded an advertising agency with Oscar Gubitz. In 1937, Hendrik Werkman discovered his painting and encouraged him to pursue it further.
From 1939, Van den Berg rented the tea house in the Sterrebos in Groningen as a studio and devoted himself entirely to his art. In 1943, he married Fie, the daughter of Hendrik Werkman.[2] After the Second World War, he visited Paris several times and took classes there at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Van den Berg divorced his wife and moved to Amsterdam in 1954, where he had a studio on the Brouwersgracht. He kept the tea house in Groningen. Initially, Van den Berg made free paintings, but his style developed from naturalism via impressionism and cubism to constructivism.
Van den Berg suffered from Guillain-Barré syndrome, which kept him out of action for about ten years from 1966 onwards. He later resumed his work, which was even more abstract than before.
Besides paintings, Van den Berg also created various sculptures; he was a self-taught sculptor. In 1983, he donated the sculpture Libbensline (Lifeline) to his native village of Tirns, which was unveiled on October 13 of that year by Queen's Commissioner Hans Wiegel. In 1986, the Humanist Broadcasting Company produced a documentary in which Van den Berg talked about his life and work.