Ben Berns, 70, landscape painter and former art professor
wazzzy
Ben Berns, a popular landscape painter and former art professor at UNC-
Greensboro, died Wednesday at his home in Fairfax, Va. He was 70.
Berns' work was collected by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the
Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the British Museum, the N.C. Museum of
Art, the Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNCG and a dozen other museums.
Born in 1936 in the Netherlands, Berns left school at age 14. Largely
self-taught, he soon was living in Paris making prints. In the 1960s
the Pratt Institute in New York invited him to teach lithography, said
his wife, Debra Berns.
In 1968, his work was shown in the Whitney Museum of American Art's
survey of new sculpture in New York and included in the Documenta 4
show in Kassel, Germany. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1971.
Berns, who made bronze sculptures, prints and drawings, moved to North
Carolina in the early 1970s to teach drawing and sculpture.
"He didn't like foolishness," said Mark Gottsegen, an associate
professor who taught art with Berns. "He was very serious, although he
could be very funny at the same time. 'Crusty' would be a good word."
After he left UNC-Greensboro in the 1980s, Berns became best known --
and a commercial success -- crafting meticulously detailed landscape
paintings. He worked directly from nature, camping nearby at night.
"He wanted to preserve exactly what he saw of the environment because
everything he felt was going [away]," Debra Berns said. "He wanted to
preserve the parts that were still beautiful.
"He would go out at 8 a.m. and work just standing there until 6 at
night, seven days a week, for weeks at a time. He was very
disciplined."
In recent years, Berns' work was shown primarily in group shows at
galleries, including Somerhill Gallery in Chapel Hill, Lee Hansley
Gallery in Raleigh and Spanierman Gallery in New York.
Hansley said he saw a strong Dutch influence in Berns' art.
"While I love the paintings, the drawings to me are his strength,"
Hansley said. "He sort of comes from that very exacting Dutch
tradition, and his drawings had that same precision."
Berns, who died of lung cancer, is survived by his wife, stepson
Matthew Yardley of Greensboro, three brothers and two sisters. The
family is planning a private memorial service.
"It's so typical of Ben not to want a fuss made over him," said Marita
Gilliam, a former Raleigh gallery owner who also showed Berns' work.