Foxglove and Larkspur

Werner Berg created his floral paintings directly from nature in the early morning and late evening. His farmer’s garden was right next to his studio and house. He liked to painted flowers, especially the mallow that he so dearly loved, as they grew, and thus he chose an extremely narrow vertical format for them. The sky is generally kept in a nocturnal darkness, from which the individual blossoms extend agleam.

Of this painting, Werner Berg said: “The night suits me particularly well, the sound of the night, the darkness. That is the way it is with this floral painting, where the foxglove is like the tone of a violin floating in the air. It is curious that I, who am a Western and basically an urbane person, feel the undertones of a foreign people especially strongly. Someone once asked me: ‘Your images are all a little melancholy, aren’t they?’ Then I always tell the story about Schubert, when he was composing the Trout Quintet and Vogl said to him: ‘Hey, Franzi, that is a merry music.’ And Schubert looked at him over his glasses and replied: ‘Do you think that there is such a thing as a merry music?’”