Anna-Eva Bergman

Norwegian artist Anna-Eva Bergman (1909–1987) viewed rhythm as a structural element of painting, a rhythm stemming from the employment of specific materials — metal foil, gold leaf, silver, copper — forms, lines and colours. Early in her career, her work was shaped by the influence of German artists from New Objectivity, but, from the 1950s onwards, it underwent a radical shift as she focused on pictorial abstraction, building a distinctive world around line and rhythm. Landscape also became a pivotal frame of reference in her work: natural motifs, Scandinavian mythology – planets, mountains, boats, fjords – and Nordic light. 

Her relationship with Spain began in 1933, when she lived in Menorca for a year with her partner, Hans Hartung. In 1962, she travelled to Almería, a trip that would be instrumental in defining her work — it was the location of her first horizon pieces, a motif she would return to when she once again painted Norwegian landscapes. This link between Norway and Spain – north and south – led to similarities in formal terms, but with very different tones, between both landscapes.

Stones are another recurring element in Bergman’s oeuvre, surfacing in the early 1970s after trips to Spain and Portugal, and demonstrated in her series Pierres de Castille (Stones of Castile, 1970).

On her travels the artist also took scores of photographs she used as trail, memory and recollection, painting her landscapes from the distance between painting and that which is perceived and transforms over the passage of time.