Simone Hoffmann's films invites us to rediscover one of the world's most important contemporary artists in the context of her retrospective exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris in 2023.
Who was Anna-Eva Bergman? Like so many women artists, the work of this abstract painter, who died in 1987, has long been overlooked, not only because she was overshadowed by her more famous husband, the artist
Hans Hartung, but because her minimalist paintings ran counter to the art-world trends of the time. Imbued with a deep sense of spirituality, Bergman's work resonates strongly with the search for meaning prevalent in today's society.
With
Thomas Schlesser (director, Fondation Hartung-Bergman), Wenche Volle (senior curator, Nasjonalmuseet Oslo), Hélène Leroy (museum curator, Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris), Jérôme Poggi (galerist), Karin Hellandsjø (art historian and friend), Bernard Derderian (former assistant).
The Norwegian-born French painter Anna-Eva Bergman (1909–1987) was a multifarious artist. Prior to the 1950s she drew
illustrations and caricatures for the press, kept notebooks on her
ideas about art, published articles, and wrote an autobiography,
a novel, and a cookery book.
At the same time she explored the realm of painting, embarking
down the path of abstraction in the late 1940s and ultimately
forging a unique style based on the use of gold and silver foil as
pictorial elements to convey archetypal forms based on nature
and Nordic mythology.
