The auction house Christie's is adding the work “OPAL1" (2004-2022) from Bernd Caspar Dietrich's Golden Times series to the spring auction “20th/21st Century: Amsterdam” (9 APR 2PM — 23 APR 2PM CEST). Link to auction number 22821 online international.

The work “Die schönen Magelone” (2020) by Bernd Caspar Dietrich is shown in the spring auction “20th/21st Century: Amsterdam” (11 April - 25 April) at Christie's international auction house online.

Bernd Caspar Dietrich's studio environment, artpark Hoher Berg, is an expert partner in RCE dysentery certified and thus a kind of artistic outstation of the United Nations University. This will incorporate his knowledge of sustainable paint production into the international network. In May 2014, the RCE-Ruhr was officially named a “Regional Center of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development” (RCE) recognized.

“The idea that the form leaves the format and thus draws the viewer's attention to changes - it is in motion - brought me to the rentals. "Bernd Caspar Dietrich (BCD), inspired by the examination of the situation of women's shelters, developed the format of "Mieten", as well as “Träum ich von Paris…".

On Orange Day on 25th November 2022, NRW Minister of the Interior Hermann Reul takes over the patronage of the "Metamorphosis ORANGE25" campaign once again. It was initiated in 2020 at the Kellermann Gallery. Together with Bärbel and Matthias Kellermann, BCD recruits further artists from the gallery to draw attention to violence against women and children and, above all, to set an example against violence. The exhibition continues for the first time until International Human Rights Day on 10 December 2022. In the podcast "The Lightness of Art", Bärbel and Matthias Kellermann give insights behind the scenes, as do Bernd Caspar Dietrich, Hella Sinnhuber and Interior Minister Herbert Reul.

With the metaphorical compound "BetonGold", BCD 2021 launches a new aesthetic dialogue. His years of research on sand led him further and further to concrete as a material, which has now become a means of expression in its own. Following a cycle of around fifty WHEELs with concentric narratives since 2013, Dietrich explores the dialectical charm and polarising aesthetics of concrete and concrete surfaces. "Whoever takes a space," says Bernd Caspar Dietrich, "also bears the responsibility to give something back to the general public and to protect it!" The exhibition "BetonGold" will be presented at artpark and extended twice at Grabbeplatz in Düsseldorf at Galerie Kellermann due to demand.

The team preview of the documentary film "Hella&Bernd" will be shown on a big screen and celebrated with filmmakers and multipliers at artpark Hoher Berg.

Documentary filmmaker Fitore Muzaqi has accompanied Bernd Caspar Dietrich and Hella Sinnhuber from 2018 to the beginning of 2021 and produced a feature film (101 min) from it. It is called "Hella & Bernd" and will celebrate its premiere at the 35th International Film Festival in Braunschweig. During the festival, BCD artworks will be shown in the independent gallery EinRaum5-7 and in the Galerie Jaeschke in Braunschweig.

Fundraising campaign until 2025, M-ORANGE25: In 2020, Dietrich conceives a charity campaign in favour of women's shelters and donates the original "Metamorphose Orange25", as well as 99 hand-painted prints for the "Zonta says NO" campaign.

NRW Minister of the Interior Herbert Reul is the patron. BCD also organises missing supplies for women's shelters. Since then, the campaign has been continued in cooperation with the Galerie Kellermann and other artists.

“The Beautiful Magelone” is a European chivalric fairy tale from the 15th century. Princess Magelone of Naples and Count Peter from Provence fall in love and - before the happy ending - are separated for years. With a touch of sweet and warm wax, vibrant summer colours and golden threads, BCD has interpreted the fairy tale on several tableaux at the request of opera singer Martin Gantner, in the Corona Summer 2020. The romances, written by Ludwig Tieck and composed by Johannes Brahms, is performed by Martin Gantner in front of an audience in the artpark outdoor area, which opens in 2020.

The outdoor area of the artpark Hoher Berg - around 7,000 m2 of paddocks - are turned into a flowering meadow with fruit trees and sculptures.  For the "Beautiful Magelone" opening, a 10-metre stage is built, a grand piano is tuned, guests are invited and the Magelone works are exhibited in the atelier.

Bernd Caspar Dietrich publishes the series of works "Metamorphosen". They are among the most emotional works that have left the studio. The metamorphoses reveal to the viewer a state in which the artist currently finds himself: He is travelling, getting to know new people, new places and customs. His eyes learn to see again, his tongue to taste, his head to argue and to love. Bernd Caspar Dietrich finds the basis for creating a new visual language and liberation in discourse with his wife Hella. The first metamorphosis declared in 2020 is WHEEL Pangaea, the primordial continent adapted for the international ORANGE Day. BCD marks the plate tectonic land masses of the last super continent in world history with yellow-orange signal colours to make the issue of violence against women and children visible. The background of the work suggests a global patriarchal-military camouflage net. BCD donated the work to a collector from Offenburg to be auctioned for women's shelters. It is the initial piece of a five-year charity campaign. Because Covid-19 turns many things upside down, BCD, in cooperation with the publishing house Fils-Fine-Art, publishes an edition of 99 to generate more donations for women's shelters.

“Die Tote Stadt" is a BCD replica of the end of the coal era in the Metropole Ruhr. It is shown at artpark Hoher Berg in spring 2019. On 21 December 2018, the last piece of hard coal was extracted from a 1,200-metre-deep shaft, barely 20 minutes from the artpark, and handed over to German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Dietrich conceives a dialogue of his works in the dark without spectators: the correspondence of the images after the last viewer has left. Through various types of phosphorus, his works pump and breathe in the darkness and hold a silent dialogue. The title "Die Tote Stadt" (The Dead City) is based on an opera by the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who explores in three musical images: How far can mourning go without uprooting? Bernd Caspar Dietrich embeds the works on "Die Toten Stadt" in "Das KulturExperimenT" in the Kälberstall and invites musicians to a jam session: Martin Gantner (baritone), Harald Großkopf (synthesist), Günter Menger (wind instruments, percussion), Andronik Yegizaryan (composer & multi-instrumentalist), Holger Teuber (percussion).

The abandoned calf barn on Hoher Berg from 1964 is transformed into an autonomous art gallery. With the exhibition concept "60 years after ZERO - a juxtaposition", artpark Hoher Berg opens its cultural experimental laboratory on 21 September 2018. In cooperation with collectors and the Kellermann (Düsseldorf) and Franzis Engels (Amsterdam) galleries, works by Otto Piene, Günther Uecker, Heinz Mack, Christian Megert, Erich Reusch, Christian Jouhet, Kees de Vries, Robbert de Goedde, Tonneke Sengers, Richard Lauret and Bernd Caspar Dietrich, among others, will be shown where for many years around 60 calves shared the space.

Dietrich experiments with puristic concrete and glass powder surfaces, the rough surfaces of which become diffuse reflection surfaces with convex and concave curvatures, or dominate the canvas with strictly geometric elevations.

With the exhibition "Reflektion" (Reflection) and "Lichtspiele" (Light Games), Bernd Caspar Dietrich 2017 presents numerous new works on paper and canvas with movement-kinetic reflection phenomena or a new quality of reflection classes, as it has been called with traffic signs since the 1950s. His usual "sandy" backgrounds become iridescent and lucid surfaces with precisely composed retroreflective surfaces.  Until 2015/16, sand, or rather various types of sand, was primarily the background of the painting, but now it is becoming an increasingly focussed visual art material through fine glass particles.

With the 9-part work "PerspektiVWechsel" (166x166cm) on handmade paper, he succeeds in creating a showcase with retroreflective cones. The resulting optics reflect the incident light back to the light source and leave a kind of afterimage on the retina as the cone folds over and appears to move.

2016 marks the beginning of his collaboration with the gallery owners Bärbel and Matthias Kellermann in Düsseldorf. Dietrich married Hella Sinnhuber in his second marriage and took off the name Heßbrügge. Four weeks after the wedding and the honeymoon at the "Floating Piers" (Christo & Jeanne Claude Project) on Lago d'Iseo, he narrowly survives a brain haemorrhage. Since that time, the left side of his body has been severely motor-impaired. Hella becomes his left half.

Nevertheless: an artist is an artist is an artist ... the studio business continues and the experiments around new mixtures of sand, concrete, clay and glass powder.

In 2015, he conceived and realised the "EnergieSammler" project in a collector's park. The Energy Collector is an autonomous sculpture made of layered and differently cut glass. The valorisation of the topic of SAND, as a resource to be protected worldwide, and the sustainable use of sand are the starting point for the narrative of sand in the form of mirrors and glass. Studies with the material "glass powder" start at this time.

The "non-profit artpark Hoher Berg UG" is a surprising as well as unusual birthday gift to BCD from friends. "artparks" are spaces designed by BCD, both temporary and permanent. In 2013, Bernd Caspar Dietrich created an "artpark" in Dorsten that he designed with a 3.50-metre-high mirror cube, followed in 2014 by two more mirror-glass cubes with artparks in Neukirchen-Vluyn and Recklinghausen.

Z1, the first computing device by the computer inventor Konrad Zuse, inspired Dietrich in 2012 at Documenta 13 to an artistic examination of digitalisation. With the exhibition "Z.EINS, Digitale Zeiten" (Z.ONE, Digital Times), he returned in 2013 with a large exhibition in Hall 6 at the Zollverein World Heritage Site in Essen and proclaimed "ZERO 2.0". Another strong impulse for him in 2013 was the "Big Air Package" project by Christo & Jeanne-Claude in the Oberhausen Gasometer. The bright, round sky in the 120-metre-high former disc gas container inspired Dietrich to create a long-running series of concentric narratives, the so-called “WHEELS".

Over 50 WHEELs - circular, mostly impasto narratives on the format 140 x150 cm have been created since then.

BCD is hired as a nanny by Hella Sinnhuber and moves to the Hoher Berg in Schermbeck at the end of 2004.

In Sandkrug near Oldenburg, BCD has several bronze designs made by the well-known blacksmith Hermann Büsching. Multi-part wax wedge works are created in the studio. In Dagebüll on the North Sea, BCD rebuilds a dwelling mound, experiments with oxblood, clay and OSB. He draws a lot.

The "liquid sculpture" (see 2001) lands in the former tank hall in Zingst. The first 10,000 bottles are delivered on pallets to his temporary studio. The surreal crane-roast pie does not go into series production; instead, BCD conceives the first 24-hour wild boar-roast challenge on the beach.

For the summer solstice, Bernd Caspar Dietrich sets up a 3 x 3 metre black cube and a beach studio on the pier and initiates the happening "Black Meets White". He founds the artists' group Return and exhibits with them in series: Zingst

Between 2000-2001, they develop the idea of "liquid sculpture" on the Bodden and conceive an elderflower-grape melange, the forerunner of the Hugo. For about ten years they practised the work of art as a company, the company as a work of art - a search for traces in the market, the experienced "Holla" stories and the "Liquid Memory Concentrate”.

In 1999 Dietrich met the journalist and cultural scientist Hella Sinnhuber and founded the artist group "Virtuell-Visuell" with her. Together they initiated a series of artistic interventions and freely financed international art compact festivals (1999-2002), among others on the beach of Zingst, with over a hundred thousand visitors.

In 1998, BCD received a lectureship for his Old Master fresco technique in Canada at the Alberta University of the Arts (ACAD) in Calgary and later also at the University of Calgary and continued to commute between the studio in Dorsten and the New World. He became the spokesperson for fundraising at ACAD, undertook expedition trips through Australia and the Asia-Pacific region and made a stop at the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles for a project. In Germany, he organised festivals and exhibition tours for Canadian artist friends.

In 1995, BCD moved from Düsseldorf to the countryside. He built a gallery and studio in the northern Ruhr region. Since his wife Anne had permanent professional commitments in North America, among other places, from 1996 onwards, a restless period of flying back and forth began.

In 1993, a first museum exhibition with 60 works was presented in Eilenburg, the town of his birth, and then in Gotha.

Invitation from 1993

In 1989, the painter decided to pursue art and freelance life. After marrying Anne Heßbrügge, he took the name Heßbrügge and signed his works with "BDH" for about twenty years. In 1989 he rented his first large studio in an old printing house in Düsseldorf's Kirchstraße on two floors with a cellar and plenty of space for colleagues from the art academy. There he made the acquaintance of Antoni Tàpies, who inspired him to work with sand.

The exploration of crystalline structures, the physical phenomenon of light and its reflection bring Dietrich's work close to the early ZERO artists.

In 1991 Dietrich published his first illustrated book "Auf Pfauenschwingen" (On Peacock Wings) with Zebulon Verlag and collaborated with the Bader Gallery "Kunst im Licht" (Art in Light).

In 1985, BCD moved to Offenbach in Hesse to join a lighting and advertising technology company, Nordlicht, which today is part of an internationally renowned specialist company for large art objects.

A second exhibition follows in 1979 at the Galerie Jeanette Hannover with political pictures from the series "Alles unter den Teppich kehren" (Sweep everything under the carpet). Dietrich trained as a letterer, worked in a tapestry manufactory and for a restorer at Hämelschenburg Castle (Weser Renaissance).

In 1978, at the age of 19, Dietrich exhibited his first series at the Bad Pyrmont Casino.

Already the hallway of his grandmother's flat in Bad Pyrmont is littered with drawing pad pictures by 9-year-old Bernd Caspar Dietrich. He likes to extend his way to school in the district of Hameln-Pyrmont to stop in front of the studio of the artist Georg Hoppenstedt, to elicit something from the fascination of art.

From standing in front of it, he looks in, watches and finally listens to how drawing pencils and the composition of pictures work, how colours are applied.

Bernd Caspar Dietrich is born in Eilenburg, Saxony. A few months after his birth he is moved to the West.