Stein ist Stille - Beyond the Silence, by Dörte Berner. The complete works of Dörte Berner from 1963 to 2020

Stein ist Stille - Beyond the Silence. The complete works of Dörte Berner from 1963 to 2020. Windhoek, Namibia 2020.

Stein ist Stille - Beyond the Silence. The complete works of Dörte Berner from 1963 to 2020. Windhoek, Namibia 2020.

Stein ist Stille – Beyond the Silence documents the creative motivation of well known Namibian sculptor Dörte Berner.

A Life of Form in a World of Stone

Introduction by Helge Denker

To turn a block of stone into an expressive form that captures a particular aspect of our human condition is a sheer work of mind. It is the channeling of a mental image, a vision, into the hands that chisel and carve and shape the stone. Stone is the foundation we live on, the fundamental substance of earth. Eroded to sand and mixed with organic debris it becomes the soil that nurtures all terrestrial life. As a medium with which to express a creative vision, it is the most elementary material available to the artist.
From an early age, Dörte Wunsch knew that she was going to be an artist and that stone was her element. At the age of 14, Dörte found her calling. Living with her family in Hamburg-Bergedorf in Germany, she regularly walked past the workshop of a mason. She was captivated by the idea of shaping stone and asked the mason for an offcut. At home, she worked the piece with hammer and screwdriver... and knew that this was what she most wanted to do - to sculpt stone. This is more than a wonderful anecdote of artistic origins. It is the first sign of a single-minded creative dedication that has stayed with Dörte throughout her life. It has defined her as an artist and continues to motivate her today, more than 60 years later. Dörte possesses a remarkable intensity, a relentless drive to express her vision through form. She is a fountain of imagery. Her childhood as a refugee in postwar Germany has undoubtedly shaped Dörte's outlook. When she was only two-and-a-half, herfamily was forced to flee her birthplace of Pozna, in what is today Poland, with little more than what they could carry. Dörte's unwavering drive to explore the fundamental aspects of being human may have found its seeds here. Dörte has produced over 350 sculptures since herteenage epiphany. After a ceramics apprenticeship, she studied drawing and sculpture in Germany, Switzerland and the USA. Back in Germany, she married Volker Berner and emigrated with him to Namibia in 1966. Here the young Berners started their family and, in the solitude and stillness of rural Namibia, Dörte found her creative persona. Three years later, she held the first of over40 exhibitions, which have taken her work across four continents. The expressive power of Dörte Berner's sculptures gained widespread international recognition and acclaim early in her career. Many of the sculptures impress with the sheer size of the stones. Some weigh more than 500 kilogrammes. Yet the works speak with the subtleties of their forms, textures and juxtapositions. Ultimately they touch us because they are able to express our fundamental emotions, our struggles, and our resilience. Dörte's ability to turn her empathy into expressive forms is perhaps best described by an account from her early career. Fascinated by the powerful features of an old woman living at Dorka (a Namibian farm), Dörte invited her to her studio for a sitting and produced a quick clay bust, from which she later made an abstracted steatite sculpture. Without knowing the old woman or having seen the clay bust, a South African doctor was able to diagnose from the stone sculpture that the subject had suffered a stroke and was half blind. He was so impressed by the work that he immediately bought it. [...]

This is an excerpt from Stein ist Stille - Beyond the Silence, by Dörte Berner.

Title: Stein ist Stille - Beyond the Silence
Subtitle: The complete works of Dörte Berner from 1963 to 2020
Artist: Dörte Berner
Selfpublished by Dörte Berner
Windhoek, Namibia 2020
Hardcover, 27 x 27 cm, 156 pages, throughout colour and b/w photographs, text in English and German

Berner, Dörte im Namibiana-Buchangebot

Stein ist Stille - Beyond the Silence

Stein ist Stille - Beyond the Silence

Stein ist Stille - Beyond the Silence: Das Lebenswerk der namibischen Bildhauerin Dörte Berner (1963 bis 2020).