Written by Louisa Eichhorn
Wolf Bertram Becker’s skylight studio space, in a community artist building in Weimar, is a space with a distinct rhythm to it. Built-in canvas cabinets line the space, holding hundreds of paintings and pointing to the scale and consistency of his practice. Outside his windows, the colors of the lush autumn trees vibrate inward and mix with the blue-on-blue tones canvases.
Becker has just returned from New Zealand. The notebooks he carried throughout the trip lie on his studio table. As he speaks about his fascination with urban landscapes, architecture and his ongoing collaboration with pianist Justus Friedrich Eichhorn - rooted in a shared relationship to New York City - it is clear how this space is at the center of his universe.
At a glance…
Name: Wolf Bertram Becker
Nationality: German
Studio Location: Weimar, Germany
Medium: Painting
Years Practicing: since 1990
Exhibited: Germany, France, Russia, Lithuania, England
Q&A
How did you get into painting?
Franz Kurzbach, a wood sculptor, was my neighbor. When I was eight years old, he took me under his wing, giving me weekly lessons. He became a kind of surrogate grandfather to me - my own fell in the war. Under his guidance, he taught me everything from still lifes to carving, casting, and modeling. Those years shaped everything that followed.
What is the main focus of your painting practice?
Built spaces and human-made perspectives have always fascinated me. The reality of my subjects is important to me - it is the point of departure. But from there, I begin a process of abstraction and reduction. I am constantly working towards the intermediate state of both reality and condensation in my motifs.
With Venice, for example, something immediately sparked. The idea of this city built in a lagoon, where the marbled palazzo on the top costs as much as its foundations. The same with New York. These enchanted worlds left an impression on me, and they are motifs to which I return again and again, each time reinterpreting them.
Yet when a tipping point is reached, when no further reduction is possible, I set the motif aside. Maintaining a loop to reality is essential to me. I do not want the work to dissolve into mere lines or patterns.
The complete free form is not what I want to focus on. But it’s wonderful that others pursue it; there is so much space, and everyone has their own rightful place.
What aspects of everyday life inspire you and your artistic practice?
I source most of my inspiration through travelling. For years I’ve been carrying around notebooks, noting down everything that speaks to me so I can take it home with me. But I have to see things for myself. Only then something resonates.
During my recent time in New Zealand, I encountered Tane Mahuta, the three-thousand-year-old giant with a sixteen-meter circumference. It was breathtaking. Remarkably, I nearly missed it, due to the grey bark blending in with the overcast weather. I simply didn’t associate such a vast surface with a tree. That moved me deeply. Now I’m curious to see what I’ll make of this experience.
You recently moved studios. How important are your studio and surroundings to your artistic practice?
My studio is the central place around which my life revolves. For some time now, I’ve been working in the top-floor studio with its beautiful skylight, a space that has become indispensable to me. My routine is equally important. Every morning, I run six to nine kilometers before settling into my work until the afternoon. I’ve tried painting through the night with red wine, but in the end I found that a steady, disciplined rhythm, much like a conventional working day, is what allows me to work at my best.
Why is New York such an important motif for you?
My first trip to New York was in 1997. That was the year I began to discover constructions and built structures as motifs for my work. For me, New York is the point of departure of modern architecture. And yet, despite its vertical ambition, the city has also grown in a remarkably organic and authentic way.
How did your collaboration with the pianist Justus Friedrich Eichhorn come about?
Classical music has a strong influence on me, and I often listen to it while painting, so the collaboration with Justus evolved quite naturally. I heard him at a house concert in Weimar. His newest CD, which had been released earlier this year, includes one of his own compositions, Skyscrapers in New York (2021) for solo piano.
As mentioned before, New York is one of the central motifs I’ve been working on. In our project, Justus’s composition is translated into images. The singular artistic experience of his piece is presented together with another one - one of my paintings - so that the two works create a joint artistic expression. It was wonderful working with him and the project will soon be published on our social media channels (justus.pianist and wolfbertrambecker).
When do you consider a work to be done?
It’s difficult to make that final brushstroke. However, I’ve set myself a rule that once I’ve signed the canvas, I don’t touch the painting again. If I go back in and change something afterward, I end up repainting the entire canvas and I’ll inevitably end up with a completely new work.
Is there a painting in which you intentionally left something unresolved?
I would say that many of my works remain deliberately open-ended. Their reduction creates space for new discoveries, allowing the viewer to carry the image further in their own imagination.
If we could show only one work from your current studio, which one would it be?
Both paintings depict the same view: the Landesmuseum in Weimar. The one on the right was painted in 1991, and the one on the left in 2009.
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This project began in 2025 when the co-editors decided to launch a collaborative magazine dedicated to the studio visit experience. Each issue catalogues the space and stories of contemporary artists. The co-editors met while studying Modern art at the Courtauld Institute in London and are now based in Berlin, New York, and London.
