Siep van den Berg - collage/pencil drawing: 4 blue 1 - 1984 (signed!) - Sold

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

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As the son of a blacksmith, Van den Berg attended vocational school. He became a house painter, but also made paintings. In 1930 he visited the Frisian painter Jacob Ydema to talk about his ambitions; on that occasion Ydema made a number of sketches of him. From 1930 to 1933 he attended the evening drawing and painting course at the Minerva Academy in the city of Groningen. He was taught by Jan Altink, among others. He also met the Frisian painter Gerrit Benner at that time. After this training, he set up an advertising agency with Oscar Gubitz. In 1937, Hendrik Werkman discovered his painting and encouraged him to continue with it.

From 1939, Van den Berg rented the tea dome in the Sterrebos in Groningen as a studio and devoted himself fully to being an artist. In 1943 he married Fie, the daughter of Hendrik Werkman.[2] He visited Paris several times after the Second World War and took classes 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 dome 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. Later he resumed his work, which was even more abstract than before.

In addition to paintings, Van den Berg also made various sculptures; as a sculptor he was self-taught. In 1983 he donated the statue Libbensline (Line of Life) to his native village of Tirns, which was unveiled on October 13 of that year by Queen's Commissioner Hans Wiegel. The Humanist Broadcaster made a documentary in 1986 in which Van den Berg talked about his life and work.