Selfportrait, cir 1946, Fondation Hartung Bergman

Anna-Eva Bergman (1909-1984) was born in Sweden but grew up in Norway when her parents separated. She studied art in Oslo and in Vienna and met her husband Hans Hartung, another painter,  in Paris at 20. This past week, I kept on running into friends who had absolutely loved the exhibition or considered Bergman as a mediocre artist. The exhibition in a way is a good image of this. I liked many works from teh early years and was totally uninterested by the later ones. you will have to form your own idea! She separated from her husband in 1937 and returned to Norway where she painted amazing landscapes. But they got back together in 1952 and built the Fondation Hartung-Bergman in Antibes in 1968. 

Anna Eva Bergman in her studio in Antibes, 1975, photo François Walch

Inspired by Nordic landscapes as well as by Mediterranean scenes (she lived on and off in Minorca and then in  Carboneras, Spain in the 60’s), Bergman was definitely a European living in Dresden with a circle of activist artists, then in Liguria where she was writing and drawing actively against the Nazis. Later she spent the war in Norway which was occupied by the Germans.

Untitled, 1931, Fondation Hartung Bergman

She was always interested in architecture and her houses painted in Minorca are a good  image of her sense of frame. She took many photographs and use them to paint. The strong deep blue and the white of the houses is a theme that she will use again in Sait Paul de Vence and when she paints the Norwegian fjords.

Untitled, cir 1933, Fondation Hartung-Bergman (houses painted in Minorca)

Her drawings and caricatures of the immigrants and the nazis are also very striking. One called “Future National Socialist” describes four different vehicles structured with swastikas. The passengers move without hurrying, as if unaware of the process that hey have set in motion. This is a strong denunciation of the brainwashing of the Nazi propaganda and she manages to be very moving with the naiveté of the work. She also draws a superb caricature of General Franco in Spain.

Nationalsocialistik fremtig, (Future national socialism), cir 1933, Fondation Hartung-Bergman

A large room is devoted to her silver and gold paintings from 1966. “Grand Ocean” for example is a portrait of the sea and the waves made in relief with vinyl metal sheets. Gold and silver landscapes hang next tot each other and reflect her interest for scientific discoveries as well archeological and astronomical progress. Her wok becomes more and more abstract and this is when I loose her…

The room with gold and silver works is superb

The donation of Zao Wou-Ki paintings by his wife Françoise Marquet-Zao (who used to be a curator at MAM) is superbly exhibited in the Christian Langlois Meurinne room. “Tribute to Matisse” was already offered in 2018 with an ink and seven porcelaine vases. Nine more paintings were given in 2022 and I particularly loved the very early pictures of a Hangzhou landscape from 1946, when he was 26. Next door you can also glimpse at the Anni and Josef Albers donation and you can pass the Charlotte Rampling exhibition…

Zao Wou-Ki, “Hangzhou landscape”, 1946, MAM

The Bergman show is until July 16 at MAM. And pin down the date of September 15 for the opening of Nicolas de Staël‘s retrospective…