Bernhard Vogel Watercolour Exhibition

View and purchase Bernhard Vogel paintings

A Truly Great Artist - Bernhard Vogel

The Austrian water-colourist and etcher was born in Salzburg in 1961. He has attained international fame, not only through his highly-praised townscapes painted in watercolour and created with mixed media but also through the wonderful luminosity of his acclaimed flower paintings, many of which are featured in art books, catalogues and calendars sold around the world. In his book ‘Blumen im Licht’ he explains why he became an artist. A turning point in his life came when he was involved in a bad motorcycle accident.

Bernhard Vogel discovered his rare talent for art literally by accident. It was whilst he was recuperating from a near fatal motor cycle crash that he first picked up a brush and found his own unique style of expression initially in the medium of watercolour.

Watercolour has often been seen as an amateur’s medium, the milieu of suburban Sunday afternoon hobbies, rather old fashioned and outdated. But this is far from the truth, just look at the glorious gems produced by Turner and the contemporary pieces of Hockney. Watercolour is as relevant today as it always has been.

When an artist such as Bernhard Vogel reinvents the medium, the effect can be startling. Vogel’s work refuses the traditional and resists the academic approach. His work is instinctive, imbued with the vitality of a colourist and the drama of an expressionist. Vogel does not shy away from colour. He is bold and supremely confident in application. He delights in the brilliance of pure colour, taking this socalled polite medium to an extreme. The drips and sloshes, the ‘happy accidents’ heighten the effect, the patches of pure white from the paper create innumerable abstractions enabling him to paint negatively. There is a raw energy to the work, animmediacy and freshness that cannot fail to excite. This dramatic intensity is coupled with skilled draughtsmanship, the quirky lines, denoting railings or streetlamps, which not only add depth to the composition but also gives a sense of vibrancy to the scene.

In this new series of work, Vogel has produced powerful scenes of Venice, New York, London, Italian and French hilltop towns and countryside as well as Still Lifes and Florals. These are truly remarkable pieces, where the interest is not in the mere surface, the play of light and reflections, but in the psychological aspect of the city. Here the mood and tone is darker, the primary reds, blues, greens and yellows are in stark contrast to the black poles, buildings and boats, which serve as strong architectural and compositional devices.

In his architectural paintings, the detail is not only in the close up - the advertising hoarding in Piccadilly Circus, the cranes behind St. Paul’s or Tower Bridge – but also in the far distance, drawing one’s eye across the marvellous skylines and landscapes of London. Describing how he attunes himself to his subject, he says "I am like a cat, that walks up and down apparently without motive, then turns around and around until it sits". Having picked his spot he acclimatizes himself, letting everything – people, cars, light, noise and smell – work on him before picking up his brush. "Apparently trivial details can suddenly become the major theme, the foreground can disappear in favour of the hinterland, or vice versa".

The dynamic quality of this work is unmistakable. Representation in itself holds no interest for Vogel, he favours expressionistic freedom. Abandoning formal constraints he paints with an unconfined vigour, yet skilfully retains control. Composition is key, even as the work blurs the boundaries between what we see and what we feel. Vogel has the assurance and confidence of a truly great artist; his reworking of the traditional medium of watercolour and his complex and dense mixed media work reveals an artist with a distinctive voice, assertive and strong.

The Watergate Street Gallery is proud to be part of the Bernhard Vogel tradition.