Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 50 cm, signed and dated on the right edge of the frame. 2022. Born in Brussels in 1961, Gérard van den Berg was destined for a career in law at an early age. His competence, his uprightness and his sharp vision quickly made him a renowned tax lawyer. Beyond this austere image of the lawyer, he is a person with an extraordinary sensitivity who expresses himself in paintings with joyful colours. The playfulness of his checkerboards contrasts so strongly with the administrative documents that make up his daily life, that they become a kind of vital balance. Playing with colours with an unconcealed joy, GvdB delivers a not so naive work. Some of his paintings are cries of suffering in the face of brutal current events that leave him bruised. Injustice, anti-Semitism, threatened peace... are all subjects evoked in his most committed works. Without any shadow, the artist plays with light, direct light, the light of the zenith. The gold of the sun, the luminous yellow and the azure blue coexist as naturally as in nature and transmit a soothing message, a perpetual renewal. Through his paintings, GvdB has created a world where it is good to live and travel. The infinitely multiplied space of his small coloured facets is an undisguised echo of the work of Vasarely, whom he admired in his youth (...) Art brut is his way, current events his source of inspiration. Marina Reingardt