Bernd Koberling grew up in Berlin. From 1955 to 1958 he trained as a chef at the Funkturm restaurant. From 1958 he studied painting under Max Kaus at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts and undertook extensive journeys to Sweden, Lapland and England. Together with Manfred Laber, Johann A. Marxmüller and Josef K. Senft-Hohburg, Koberling founded the neo-expressionist artist group Vision in 1960. In 1965 he had a solo exhibition at the Berlin gallery Großgörschen 35. In the following years he exhibited at the Galerie René Block (Berlin, 1966), the Galerie Michael Werner (Cologne, 1969) and the Galerie Ursula Lichter (Frankfurt am Main, 1969, 1972). Koberling has also had solo exhibitions at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin, Städtisches Museum Leverkusen Schloss Morsbroich (1978), the Bielefelder Kunstverein (1985), the Kunstverein Braunschweig (1986) and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf (1991). From 1976, Koberling taught as a guest lecturer at the art academies in Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Berlin, and from 1981 onwards he was professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg until he moved to the Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1988. Koberling is represented in numerous group exhibitions, including "Hommage à Lidice" (Galerie René Block, Berlin, 1967), "14 mal 14" (Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 1969), "Szene Rhein-Ruhr '72" (Museum Folkwang, Essen, 1972), "A New Spirit in Painting" (Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1981), "Zeitgeist. Internationale Kunstausstellung Berlin 1982" (Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 1982/83), "New Painting from Germany" (Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 1983), "German Art in the 20th Century" (Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1985), "Berlinart 1961−1987" (The Museum of Modern Art, New York/San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1987/88) and the travelling exhibition "Refigured Painting. The German Image 1960−1988" (among others Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1988). Retrospectives of his work have taken place at the Malmö Konsthall (2001), the Sprengel Museum Hanover (2013) and the Küppersmühle Museum of Modern Art in Duisburg (2017). In 1969/70 Koberling was awarded a scholarship from the Villa Massimo in Rome and he received the Fred Thieler Prize for Painting in 2006.
