4068 - Fredo Bley, "Village Road"

Fredo Bley, "Village Road" A road leading through a village in the Vogtland region, with houses nestled close together and covered in snow; a powerful painting with impasto brushwork, oil on hardboard, monogrammed and dated ‘FB (19)73", titled "Dorfstraße" on the reverse and labelled "Fredo Blei Buchwald/V. 92", unframed, dimensions approx. 43 x 62 cm. Artist information: 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 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.