Anna-Eva Bergman Revisited

“Pyramide No.6” 1960

The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris presents a major retrospective of work by Norwegian artist Anna-Eva Bergman (1909-1987, who lived in France with her husband Hans Hartung for many years. Her work marked a step forward for non-figurative painters and ranks with other great women artists such as Hilma af Klint, Georgia O’Keeffe and Sonia Delaunay (to July 16, 2023).

A stay on the Norwegian coast in 1950 led to a profound renewal of Bergman’s artistic vocabulary and an evolution of her painting towards simple forms. After a minimalist period a final transfiguration took place in the late 1970s, with an alternation between small formats she called “mini-paintings” and very large ones whose narrowed chromatic range bear witness to her mastery of composition and synthesis. 

“The path that leads to art is through nature and our attitude towards it.” wrote Bergman as she formed her aesthetic theory linking her distinctive relationship to nature with a radical purity of colors and forms. The exhibition (highlighting her trademark use of metallic materials such as gold and silver leaf) is a chance to discover a visionary postwar painter, who created a singular pictorial language based on a vocabulary of simple forms inspired by Nordic and Mediterranean landscapes. 

Anna-Eva Bergman, “Voyage ver l’interieur, “Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, to July 16,2023,