4067 - Fredo Bley, "Group of Houses in the Snow"

Fredo Bley, "Group of Houses in the Snow" Bare trees standing around a small pond, with a farmstead and woodland in the background; the snow-covered scene is bathed in the light of the fading day, a impasto landscape painting in partly muted colours, oil on hardboard, monogrammed and dated ‘FB (19)78", titled on the reverse "Group of Houses in the Snow" and inscribed by the artist "Fredo Bley Buchwald/Vogtl.", framed, inner dimensions approx. 44.5 x 50 cm. Artist’s biography: born 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 the Wismut uranium mines; 1946-48: worked as an agricultural and forestry labourer in Thuringia; 1948-56: apprenticeship and work as a decorative painter and sign 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 works 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.