Art2Muse

Artworks available to view in Sydney

Bernd Heinrich was born in Weimar, Germany, studied at the Art Academy Augsburg for four years and graduated with honours and an Art Degree. He arrived in Sydney in 1970 and returned to Europe for two years, travelling extensively and exhibited in Munich and Augsburg, (Germany).

He returned to Sydney in 1975; studied etching at the Willoughby Art Centre. He has held numerous solo and group exhibitions since 1974, painted Garry McDonald and the Australian actor and international author, Thomas Keneally, for the Archibald Prize. Bernd is represented in the National Portrait Gallery Canberra with the painting of Thomas Keneally and in numerous private collections in Australia, USA, England and Germany. He has exhibited many times in the Wynne Art Prize and in the Dobell Art Prize 2003 with a drawing of Professor Peter Pinson. In Germany he exhibited in 1983 and 1984 in the Grosse Kunst Ausstellung in Munich.

Artist Statement

My paintings are “Playgrounds – Landscapes," an inner experience of freedom and passion not restricted by conventions or boundaries. In my journey as an artist I am inspired to create from the inside out to express my fascination and passion in combining
my inner world with reality.

“Playgrounds in time and space” are my re-occurring themes. Divided and separated by space, lines, images, symbols, forms and shapes – composed like a sheet of music in the harmony of a visual symphony – to reveal my inner world. My canvases are often heavily textured, deeply scarred and evoke the feeling of being sculptured. Often I use found objects, architectural symbols, and silkscreen images or find it necessary to include written statements or pieces of poetry to underline or human presence.
- Bernd Heinrich

Solo Exhibitions

1977 Sydney Robin Gibson Gallery
1978 Sydney Wagner Gallery
1980 Sydney Wagner Gallery
1982 Sydney Wagner Gallery
1983 Gosford 460 Gallery
1987 Sydney Coventry Gallery
1991 Germany Himmlisch Wohnen Gallery
1992 Sydney Espace Alliance Gallery
1993 Sydney Fry Gallery Nuernberg
1994 Canberra Beaver Gallery
1997 Sydney North Shore Art Gallery
1998 Germany Himmlisch Wohnen Gallery
1998 Germany MSB Gallery
1998 Sydney North Shore Art Gallery
2000 Sydney Norton Gallery
2001 Sydney Wagner Gallery
2003 Sydney S Gallery
2006 Sydney Artarmon Gallery

Selected Group Exhibitions

1973 Germany Schwaebische Kunstausstellung
1974 Germany Schwaebische Kunstausstellung
1976 Sydney Wynne Prize NSW Gallery
1977 Sydney Wynne Prize NSW Gallery
1978 Sydney Archibald Prize NSW Gallery - Garry McDonald
1980 Sydney Wynne Prize NSW Gallery
1981 Sydney Wynne Prize NSW Gallery
1983 Sydney Wynne Prize NSW Gallery
1983 Germany Grosse Kunstausstellung Munich
1984 Germany Grosse Kunstausstellung Munich
1986 Sydney S. H. Ervine Gallery, 1987 - 2000
1988 Sydney Coventry Gallery
1989 Adelaide BMG Fine Arts Gallery
1989 Sydney BMG Fine Arts Gallery
1998 Sydney Mosman Art Prize, 1990 - 2004
1990 Sydney Archibald Prize - Thomas Keneally
1991 Sydney Bridge Street Gallery
1991 Melbourne Fine Art Gallery
1992 Uncommon Australians - Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra
1996 Sydney Archibald - Salone de Refuses - David Asden
1997 Sydney SCECGS Redlands
1997 Sydney Wagner Gallery
1998 Shanghai Wagner Gallery
2000 London Portrait Exhibition
2000 New York New Century Gallery
2001 Sydney Artamon Gallery
2003 Sydney Dobell Drawing Art Prize NSW Gallery
2003 Sydney Mosman Art Gallery
2004 Gosford Gosford Art Gallery
2005 Gosford Gosford Art Gallery
2005 Sydney Artarmon Gallery
2006 Sydney Mosman Art Gallery
2008 Sydney Art2Muse at the Tom Dunne Gallery

Collections

National Portrait Gallery Canberra - Thomas Keneally

Publications: New Art Four, Uncommon Australian Australian Watercolour

Memberships

Australian Watercolour Institute

Member of the AWI since 1984

Peninsula Art Society

Bibliography

Neville Drury, New Art Four, Craftsman House, 1990; Julian Fagan, Uncommon Australian, Towards an Australian Portrait Gallery.

Bernd Heinrich by Imogen Corlette

One of the most striking and intriguing elements of the new landscape work being produced in Australia at the moment in the shift towards treating the canvas as the landscape rather than using it simply to represent or depict. In this way, the artist is re-cast as ' toiler the earth' as opposed to its renderer. The application of paint, bracken, metal, glazes, found objects etc the two dimensional canvas therefore represents
construction in its own right. In these works, the Australian landscape is reborn, not as a colonial outpost, surveyor's plot, picturesque sign of leisure/work, ownership, but as a conceptual and aesthetic "playground" for the artist's imagination. Bernd is one such artist, whose work are, quintessentially, contemporary Australian landscape, with a look that is simultaneously haunted, scarred, entrancing, lucid and resonating.

The conceptual base of Bernd's work is highly esoteric. The sense of secrecy in the images is strong, with the landscape abstracted to the point where depth, focus and form are almost, obscured - and where the earth appears to harbor secrets and symbols which point outwards to realms beyond the canvas. This ghostly aesthetic has undertones of Fred Williams and Arthur Boyd whose work has also featured an unsettling sense of the mysterious in Australian landscape and outback. Bernd's gestural process of constructing the images also bears a somewhat tortured likeness to the more abstract works of Brett Whiteley.

Bernd's works are both highly physical (in the complex and rigorous nature of their construction) and highly esoteric. The result is a body of work which makes a well grounded and stimulating contribution to both "Australian Landscape" as an art historical genre, and to "Contemporary Landscape" as a vital element of current international artistic practice.