Anna-Eva Bergman

Anna-Eva Bergman, born in Stockholm in 1909, is today regarded as one of Norway's foremost abstract painters. She grew up in Norway with her Norwegian mother and several aunts, and began her art education at just 16 years old at the National Academy of Craft and Art Industry in Oslo. Shortly after, she was accepted into the National Academy of Fine Arts, where she studied under Axel Revold, a former student of Matisse.

In Paris, she met the German artist Hans Hartung in 1929. They married the same year and became part of an artistic circle that included Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Miró. After the marriage ended in 1939, Bergman returned to Norway, where she temporarily set aside her art. Instead, she immersed herself in studies of Norwegian medieval history, archaeology, philosophy, and geometry – studies that would prove decisive for her artistic development.

Two journeys to Northern Norway in 1950 and 1964 changed everything. The encounter with the Norwegian landscape – the mountains, the sea, the horizon – became the foundation for the artistic expression she is known for today. She developed an abstract style with simple, geometric forms inspired by nature, and began using gold and silver leaf on canvas and board. Layer upon layer of metal foil, scraped and worked, creates a shimmering, almost magical luminosity. Her works evoke rock fragments, stones, moons, and horizons – a visual vocabulary she called "Les Thèmes."

Bergman reunited with Hartung in 1952, and they remarried in 1957. Together they built a home and studios in Antibes, where the Fondation Hartung-Bergman now preserves their legacy.

Although she spent much of her life in France, Bergman considered herself a Norwegian artist. She achieved her international breakthrough in the 1950s, though recognition in Norway came later. Today her works hang in museums worldwide, from the National Museum in Oslo to the Reina Sofía in Madrid. In recent years, interest in Bergman has surged internationally, with major exhibitions at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris (2023) and the National Museum in Oslo (2024). Auction prices have risen by over 300 percent in the past decade.

The quiet power, the poetic light, makes her works continue to move us.