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

Collage/pencil drawing by Siep v/d Berg from 1984. Title: 4 blue 1. The work is signed in pencil lower 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 the craft 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 course in Drawing and Painting at the Minerva Academy in the city of Groningen. He was taught by Jan Altink, among others. Then he also got to know the Frisian painter Gerrit Benner. 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 cupola in the Sterrebos in Groningen as a studio and devoted himself completely to artistry. In 1943 he married Fie, the daughter of Hendrik Werkman.[2] After the Second World War, he visited Paris a number of times and attended 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 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, as a result of which he was out of circulation 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 (Life Line) to his native village Tirns, which was unveiled on 13 October of that year by Queen's Commissioner Hans Wiegel. The Humanist Broadcasting Company made a documentary in 1986, in which Van den Berg talked about his life and work.