Anna-Eva BERGMAN

Anna-Eva Bergman – Life, Work and Original Prints: Woodcuts in Gold and Silver, Etchings and Lithographs

Norwegian by upbringing, Parisian by choice, Anna-Eva Bergman (1909-1987) painted the far North as few artists have: mountains, fjords, standing stones and endless horizons pared down to a handful of shapes and laid in metal leaf – gold, silver, copper, tin – so that each picture changes with the light of the room. A leading voice of post-war abstraction and the School of Paris, she spent decades in the shadow of her husband Hans Hartung before major retrospectives in Paris and Oslo restored her reputation. She was also a fine printmaker, whose woodcuts printed in gold and silver ink are among the most distinctive original prints of her generation.

In Paris, Galerie Le Coin des Arts offers original prints by Anna-Eva Bergman – woodcuts, etchings and lithographs – chosen for the quality of the impression, their provenance and their condition.

Early Years: Stockholm, Oslo and the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule

She was born in Stockholm on 29 May 1909 to a Swedish father and a Norwegian mother; her parents parted soon afterwards and she was brought up in Norway. A gifted caricaturist from childhood, she enrolled in 1926 at the National College of Applied Arts and Crafts in Oslo and studied at the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts under Axel Revold in 1927-1928.

In 1928 she went on to Vienna, to the Kunstgewerbeschule, where the teaching of Eugen Steinhof left a lasting mark on her ideas about construction and proportion. A short and, by her own account, rather dull spell at André Lhote's academy in Paris in 1929 had one decisive consequence: there she met the young German painter Hans Hartung, whom she married that same year.

Satire, Travel and Separation in the 1930s

Between 1930 and 1936 the couple moved between the Riviera, Dresden, Paris, Berlin and the Balearic island of Menorca, where they built a house by the sea in 1933-1934. Drawing on the sharp line of Otto Dix and George Grosz, Bergman earned her keep with satirical cartoons and illustrated reportage for Norwegian papers, and showed her work in Dresden and, in 1932, at Blomqvist in Oslo.

Ill health and strains in the marriage led to a separation in 1937. Convalescing on the Italian Riviera, she discovered Byzantine mosaics and early Renaissance painting. The couple divorced and in 1939 she went home to Norway, settling in Oslo.

Norway: the Golden Section and the Light of the North

The war years were spent illustrating books, producing anti-Nazi drawings and studying the golden section. Through the architect Christian Lange, a specialist in Gothic building, she came to know medieval Norwegian altar frontals, whose gilded grounds would later inspire her use of metal leaf. She returned to painting in earnest from 1946.

The turning point came in 1950, on a journey up the coast of northern Norway to Finnmark. From then on she abandoned figuration for a vocabulary of elemental forms – rock, mountain, fjord, horizon, planet – and made her first works in metal leaf, burnished and incised so that the surface catches and returns the light.

Paris Again: Recognition from La Hune to documenta

In 1952 Bergman sent a canvas to the Salon de Mai in Paris, exhibiting there every year until 1960, and was reunited with Hartung; they remarried in 1957. The bookshop-gallery La Hune showed her prints in 1955, and the Galerie de France gave her a first Paris solo exhibition in 1958, followed by a second in 1962. Her paintings hung at documenta II in Kassel in 1959.

From 1962 the couple spent long periods at Carboneras in Andalusia, whose sea horizons gave rise to a new series. Retrospectives followed in Oslo and Bergen (1966) and at the Museo Civico in Turin (1967), and in 1969 she represented Norway at the São Paulo Biennial.

Antibes, the Foundation and a Late Rediscovery

In 1973 Bergman and Hartung settled into the house and studios he had designed on the hills above Antibes. There she continued her large canvases, began her "mini-paintings" and went on printing. The Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris exhibited her work in 1977. She died in Grasse on 24 July 1987.

Since 1994 the Fondation Hartung-Bergman in their former villa has preserved and promoted both artists' work. British audiences rediscovered her in Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (9 February-7 May 2023). Weeks later the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris opened the landmark retrospective Anna-Eva Bergman. Voyage vers l'intérieur (31 March-16 July 2023), followed in 2024 by Becoming Anna-Eva Bergman at the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo.

Bergman as a Printmaker: Intaglio and Woodcut

Printmaking ran through her career from her student days, but it took on real importance after her return to Paris. In 1953-1954 she worked at the celebrated Atelier Lacourière in Montmartre, mastering every intaglio process – etching, aquatint, soft ground, drypoint and engraving. Michel Seuphor was already writing about her colour etchings in 1954; the plate Le Nord (1958), printed and published by Lacourière et Frélaut, was used for the cover of her Galerie de France catalogue.

Her favourite medium, however, was the woodcut, usually cut on the plank so that the grain plays its part in the image. From the 1960s she printed her blocks in gold, silver or manganese blue, translating the shimmer of her metal-leaf paintings into the print: Fjord (1967), Uranus, Horizon and Mer (1968), Petites vagues (1974).

Lithographs, Printers and the Catalogue Raisonné

In 1963 she began a long collaboration with the Erker-Presse in St Gallen, Switzerland, which printed her Finnmark lithographs (Finnmark, Cap Nord, Mur de montagne, each in a print run of 24), several woodcuts and the illustrated books L'Or de vivre (Jean Proal, 1974) and Egil Skallagrimsson (Halldór Laxness, 1979). Other blocks were printed in Nuremberg by F. X. Leipold, and some 1970s lithographs by Mourlot in Paris. In 1978 she won the gold medal at the International Print Biennale in Fredrikstad.

The standard reference is the catalogue raisonné Anna-Eva Bergman. L'œuvre gravé / Grafikk (Fondation Hartung-Bergman and Nasjonalmuseet, 2015), in which each print is identified by a prefix – "G" for intaglio, "GB" for woodcut, "L" for lithograph – a number and the year, e.g. GB 26-1967 Fjord.

Buying an Original Print by Anna-Eva Bergman

Small print runs, fine papers and the glint of metallic inks give Bergman's prints much of the presence of her paintings, at a fraction of the price – which is why they are increasingly sought after by collectors.

When considering a Bergman woodcut, etching or lithograph, check: the medium, and for woodcuts whether gold or silver ink is used; the print run and numbering (usually between 10 and 50 impressions, occasionally larger for catalogue editions) or an artist's proof or hors commerce inscription; that the sheet is pencil-signed; the catalogue raisonné number; the printer (Lacourière, Erker-Presse, Leipold, Mourlot); and the provenance and condition, especially any tarnishing of silver inks or fading of the paper.

Original print or reproduction? Since the recent exhibitions, posters and reproductions after her paintings have become common; they are neither numbered nor signed. An original print was cut, etched or drawn by Bergman herself and printed under her supervision – the texture of the wood, the embossing of an intaglio plate and a catalogue reference are the tell-tale signs.

Galerie Le Coin des Arts selects Anna-Eva Bergman's engravings and lithographs with close attention to authenticity, provenance and condition, and can advise on framing, mount and conservation. You may also enjoy the prints of Hans Hartung, Serge Poliakoff, Pierre Soulages, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and Zao Wou-Ki.

Sources and references

Whitechapel Gallery, Action, Gesture, Paint (2023) · Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, press kit, 2023 · Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo · Store norske leksikon · AWARE – Archives of Women Artists · Geneviève Duris, Catherine Gonnard, Randi E. V. Godø, Anna-Eva Bergman. L'œuvre gravé / Grafikk, Fondation Hartung-Bergman / Nasjonalmuseet, 2015.