Blühend. Bilder 2022/23 - Bernd Zimmer
Images of the Exhibition
Description
On November 6, Bernd Zimmer turned 75. And once again, he has reinvented himself. Bavaria’s grand master of expressive painting loves to explore a single motif in all its coloristic and formal nuances—only to eventually replace it with something entirely new. When the trained philosopher and religious scholar turned to painting in 1974, he was initially captivated by fields. Around the turn of the millennium, he discovered the cosmos. Later came a fascination with reflective water surfaces and majestic mountain landscapes. In 2022, he took yet another step forward: now, the sprouting and blooming of the plant world is his central theme.
But Zimmer doesn’t merely depict these motifs. Rather, he harnesses nature’s own generative forces. It almost seems as though things grow all on their own beneath his furious brushwork. Using explosive pours and splashes, he first applies paint to canvases laid flat: green, brown, red, yellow! This is followed by structured brushwork at the easel. His gestural application of color is gradually contained and overlaid by toxic-orange color fields, until only in a few gaps does the underlying layer emerge—forming bushes, trees, branches, leaves, and blossoms.
Still carrying the fresh scent of paint, several large-format canvases from this most recent “blooming” series have now arrived at the Wolfgang Jahn Gallery on Munich’s Reichenbachstrasse. They are joined by small color sketches, serving as studies for spontaneous acts of painting, offering insight into Zimmer’s creative process.
With these sensually intoxicating works, Zimmer lets us feel that—despite humanity’s tireless efforts to impose order—nature’s forces keep breaking through. Gallery owner Wolfgang Jahn gifts us, through Zimmer’s anniversary exhibition, spaces of experience for our own human powers of creation.
Daniel J. Schreiber
