Varda Breger | HOPE

Description

Varda Breger

Born in Israel, master’s degree in chemistry at Tel Aviv University. While studying in the Netherlands, at the Faculty of Art at Tel Aviv University, at the People’s University, and at the Beit Midrash for teachers in Ramat Hasharon, her passion for painting grew, and after years of research, teaching in the last thirty years, painting has become her main occupation.
Berger lives in Tel-Aviv and has been a member of the Association of Painters and Sculptors of Tel-Aviv since 1986, in the Forum for Ecological Art and Association of Creative Women, and was elected to the International Association of European Artists. Recently, she was chosen to join the international association AFC Artists for the Preservation of Nature.
In her works and poems, Varda Berger deals with ecological and social issues and the pursuit of peace.
The lack of balance between man and advanced technology and nature has resulted in pollution, the depletion of biological diversity, and the disappearance of many species in nature. The maiden called today by scientists the sixth extinction. (The fifth was the age of the dinosaurs).
In her paintings, you will find migratory wild animals and birds in danger of extinction. Lions, tigers, deer, and migrating birds like pelicans and cranes.

A series of poems and paintings of a naked woman without a head deals with discrimination, humiliation, inequality, and women’s rights in the world, especially in the Third World.
One of her latest series deals with migratory birds as a model for living in peace without borders, without fanatical religion, and without fuel to fight over – wing and spirit.

Berger uses prints of soles and tires to depict the rapacity of man.
On the other hand, she works with very diluted acrylic paint on paper, in a spontaneous technique in which she shakes the paint, and currents are created that include the sad objects and perhaps reflect our faces?

In 2004, Berger won the Kafka Medal for female artists in Prague, Czech Republic. In 2011, she was invited to the Biennale in Tuscany CHIANCIANI (160 artists were selected out of 1600 to whom the Biennale applied) and won the second prize – the Leonardo Prize for paper works.
In 2012, at the same place, she won the first prize for paper works at an international exhibition.
In 2013, she was invited to the Biennale in Izmir, Turkey. 453 artists from 53 countries participated, and 19 judges – Verda Berger won the second prize in the painting category (including all techniques).
In 2015, Her work was exhibited at the ARTQUAKEKYOTO International Biennale, museum Kyoto, and was awarded the First Prize for promoting Peace through Art.
In 2017 and 2019, she participated at the London International Art Biennale and won third and second Prizes for works on paper, selected out of 140 featured artists.
In 2020, Berger exhibited at the MUSA International Art Space, a woman’s essence show in Rome.

Berger’s work has been exhibited in over twenty-five solo exhibitions in Israel, along with countless group exhibitions in Israel and around the world. She expresses her views in poems, most in the Eiko style, which has recently accompanied her shows.
During the past years, she has published several books, including the “Kochav Haim,” paintings and poems in Hebrew and English, published by Ibn Hoshan and designed by David Tratkober.

“In my works, poems, and paintings, I deal with the future of our vulnerable, warming planet and its social relations. I paint a charming, sad lion, gazelle, or hedgehog, which appears out of chaos, but looking carefully, the object is caged and trod upon by my shoe or a car tire.”

It is unbelievable that a third world war is threatening us in the third millennium. Millions of immigrants are seeking a safe place.
I used Picasso’s Guernica and a bleeding dove to remind us of past horrors.
A dead, naked, bruised woman, head covered with a fig life, fork, and knife beside her, murdered by her husband or brothers.
I tilt the paper, and streams of dilute paint cage the objects. Maybe we are caged too. I convey my feelings also in short poems, 

Civilization.

Ignoring the elegies of the earth.
IF only,
if only,
I had the wing of a bird
I might from a green tree-top
see peace.