4066 - Fredo Bley, Path between Fields

Fredo Bley, Path between Fields Hilly landscape with scattered trees and a path winding between fields and meadows; a powerful, impasto landscape painting; oil on hardboard; signed, dated and inscribed on the reverse as “Fredo Bley (19)73/Buchwald”, unframed, dimensions approx. 47 x 29 cm. Artist information: real name Fredo Robert Bley, German painter and graphic artist (1929, Mylau in the Vogtland region - 2010, Reichenbach), 1943-46: trained as a lithographer alongside Wolfgang Mattheuer under Carl Werner in Reichenbach to avoid compulsory service in Wismut’s uranium mining operations; 1946-48: worked as an agricultural and forestry labourer in Thuringia; 1948-56: apprenticeship and work as a decorative and lettering painter; inspired by the painter Walter Löhner; largely self-taught; member of the Association of Visual Artists (VBK) of the GDR from 1952; due to financial constraints, from 1957-64, he worked concurrently as a brickworks and construction labourer; from 1966, he worked as a freelancer, whilst also holding a temporary contract with VEB Baumechanik Lengenfeld and, until 1990, serving as head of the painting section at ‘NEMA’ Netzschkau; he contributed to numerous exhibitions, including one in 2002 at the new Federal Chancellery in Berlin; he worked in Mylau and, from 1960, in the house he built himself in Buchwald, Source: AKL, Eisold, *Artists in the GDR*, Frank Weiß, *Painting in the Vogtland*, and Wikipedia.