Bergman, Anna-Eva

Painter Anna-Eva Bergman was born in Sweden in 1909, but grew up in Norway. She spent most of her artistic life in Paris. Her partner was the well-known artist Hans Hartung, to whom she was married twice. It was there that Bergman solidified the most important motifs in her art - slabs of rock and ice, earthy expanses, and veils of sea and sky.
 

The inspiration for her abstract landscape motifs was the volcanic landscape of Andalusia and the remote Barents Sea coast of Norway. Bergman united the contrasts of these two vegetations at the site of her painting. In layers, she covered canvases with metal foil and modeling clay. With a single stroke she depicted the horizon, with a single luminous color surface the vastness and depth of the powerful sea. Bergman was always fascinated by the beauty of untouched nature, which appears as a mystical atmosphere in her paintings.
 

One is immersed in the transience and simultaneous intimacy that constitute this vastness of her paintings. Often it seems as if Bergman is aiming at something that goes beyond art on our earth and turns towards cosmic geology and astral abstractions. In numerous fascinating woodcuts and powerful etchings, Anna-Eva Bergmann reveals her creative and spiritual spirit. She exhibited regularly in Paris in the 1960s and 70s, including a magnificent retrospective at the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1977.