Siep van den Berg - pencil drawing + clipping: - 1976 (signed!)

Pencil drawing + newspaper clipping by Siep v/d Berg from 1976. The work is signed in pencil at the bottom left. The authenticity of the work offered is fully guaranteed. A certificate of authenticity can be emailed upon request.

Upon purchase, the work can be picked up in 's-Gravenzande (near The Hague (Scheveningen), Rotterdam and Delft and 5 minutes from the beach). The period for collection, with advance payment, is very generous, in other words, the buyer can collect the work weeks or even months later and, if possible, combine it with a visit to one of the above-mentioned cities or the beach. We can also ship the work with Postnl. Our shipping days are Tuesday and Thursday.

Van den Berg attended the trade school as the son of a blacksmith. 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 followed the evening course Drawing and Painting at the Academie Minerva in the city of Groningen. He was taught by Jan Altink, among others. At that time he also met the Frisian painter Gerrit Benner. After this course 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 house in the Sterrebos in Groningen as a studio and devoted himself entirely to his work as an artist. In 1943, he married Fie, the daughter of Hendrik Werkman.[2] After the Second World War, he visited Paris several times and took lessons 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 circulation for about ten years from 1966. He later resumed his work, which was even more abstract than before.
In addition to paintings, Van den Berg also made various sculptures; he was a self-taught sculptor. In 1983, he donated the sculpture Libbensline (Line of Life) to his native village of 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.