Having exhibited widely around the UK once again since Covid lockdowns finished, Berlin Walls Gallery returns to the Old Fire Station with another eclectic selection of modern, decorative and collectable late 20th century artworks and prints.

Simon Hearnden, collector & curator of the exhibition says he always enjoys coming back to his home town and that the exhibition is titled after his mother Sheila, who passed away a few months ago, “she was well known around Henley and ran local nursery schools locally back in the 70s and 80s”, he continues, “the exhibition features artists works I collected and befriended whilst spending a decade recently in Berlin. It is art for your walls from Berlin, a play on Berlin Wall, rather than featuring it. Most people get it when they see the exhibition… a few hoped they might buy a piece of the Wall (good luck!).”

He describes the exhibition simply as ‘artwork for your walls, from Berlin, that takes you in new directions’. This popular exhibition is a chance to view excellent quality art by artists of promise and renown from the former East and West, and now unified German capital, available at affordable prices.

This eleven day showcase at the Old Fire Station Gallery, Market Place from Friday 16th – Monday 26th September will include a collectable lithograph by neo-expressionist, artist AR Penck (1939-2017), who recently had a retrospective exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Simon’s journey in to art collecting ramped up considerably In 2006, after he stumbled across the works of the enigmatic, but talented Walter Lindner (1936-2007), who obsessively worked for 40 years producing highly accomplished and original monotypes, whom he befriended briefly.

Lindner’s art works and prints continue to attract significant interest wherever they are displayed. The techniques and use of materials, as well as often the subject matter, humour and even melancholy in the artist’s works particularly attracts other artists. ‘I am always pleased when an artist comes back to find me and tells me how Walter Lindner helped change the way they paint, or make prints. It happens regularly and that makes me happy also’, says Simon.

Buoyed by the reactions to his bold move to purchase Lindner’s estate, Simon collected and will also be exhibiting other artists of promise, or renown from Berlin. Notable will be works by Alexander Camaro, Elvira Bach and Hartwig Ebersbach.

Alexander Camaro (1901-1992) was a painter and dancer. The Nazi authorities in Berlin decided his work was “degenerate” and exhibiting his paintings was banned. He survived chiefly through dancing during that era. Following a comprehensive exhibition of the artists surviving works in 1951,  including receipt of the Berlin Arts Prize, Camaro became professor of painting at the Berlin University of the Arts. He worked alternately on the island of Sylt and in Berlin until his passing. He almost certainly taught Walter Lindner whilst at the university, and gained notoriety following exhibitions at the Akademie Der Künste, Berlin in the 1970s. A charitable foundation was set up in Berlin by the artists widow Renate, which continues to award bursaries to promising artists connected to the city.

Dare to be different? is free entry and open at the Old Fire Station Gallery daily from 11-5pm.

*The exhibition will not be open on Monday 19th September in respect of Her Majesty The Queen’s funeral