Artist questionnaire

Description

J.P. Hodin's questionnaire completed by Anna-Eva Bergman with details of her life and work.

[Translation/transcription]

I. LIFE AND WORK DATA

Full name:
Date and Place of Birth:
Art Schools visited:
Dates, Names of Teachers:
ANNA-EVA BERGMAN
29-5-1909 Stockholm, Sweden
School of Arts and Crafts, Oslo 1926-27
Art Academy, Oslo, 1927-28, Professor Axel Revold
School of Applied Arts, Vienna, 1928-29, Professor Steinhof
Study trip to Paris 1929

Advantages connected with education in art schools: influences on further work:

When started work in personal direction? Name works and dates:
After a long interruption during the war I started painting again in 1947. First abstract attempts. In 1950 I exhibited an abstract painting for the first time, in a group exhibition at the museum in Stockholm (Unge Kunstneres Samfund). In Paris I first exhibited a large abstract painting at the Salon de Mai in 1952, but my first really important exhibition of large paintings was at the Galerie de France in 1958. My ‘personal direction’ started when I came back to Paris in 1952 – i.e. the large, simple forms that I have been working with since then.

Represented in public collections:
Name works and collections
I have engravings in several museums, e.g. Stockholm and New York, USA, I don’t know where exactly, but paintings only in private collections, e.g. Graindorge in Liège, Belgium, Hans Arnold in New York etc. and very many more, but none in public collections.

Prizes, Scholarships, Awards
Never
Are you holding a teaching job in an art school:
Name school and dates:

State whether mentioned in any book on art:
Name title of book, page, and illustration, if any
Illustrert Norsk Kunstnerleksikon, one reproduction p. 31, biography p. 28
Dictionnaire de la peinture abstraite (Michel Seuphor), one reproduction p. 130
L’Aventure de l’art abstrait by Michel Ragon

Date and places of journeys abroad:
1928-29 Vienna, 1929 Paris, 1930-31 Dresden, 1933-35 Menorca, Balearic Islands. Later Paris, Italy. 1939-52 Norway. Resident in Paris since 1952.

Do you belong to a group? (name)

Exhibitions held:
Galerie Kühl, Dresden 1931
Galerie Blomquist, Oslo 1932
Unge Kunstneres Samfund, Oslo 1950
Galerie Wasmuth, Berlin 1952
Galerie Ariel, Paris 1955
Galerie La Heine (engravings), Paris 1955
Galerie de France, Paris 1958
Galerie La Heine (woodcuts), Paris 1958
Galerie van de Loo, Munich 1958
Numerous group exhibitions – Salon de Mai, Paris, every year from 1952 – Lissone, Ljubljana, Stockholm – and many more (Sao Paolo 1955 with [illegible], Turin 1957, etc.


II. STYLISTIC DATA

(a) Describe briefly your own stylistic development, changes of style, themes, etc. State reason why and dates when occurred.
Drawn and painted my entire life – initially figuratively until 1933. Then a fourteen year hiatus (illness and depression) until 1947. By 1933 I had already lost interest in figurative painting, though without knowing why. I tried to paint figurative paintings again after 1947, but it was impossible, it all seemed awful. As a result of studying historic art and archaeology, historic architecture, construction, compositional exercises and colour studies, my abstraction developed entirely of its own accord, and without me actually wanting it.

(b) State main sources of inspiration (in England and abroad). Names of artists and art trends, or other influences.
As paradoxical as it may sound, it was always the most ancient art that most led me to abstract painting: the compositional laws of the Renaissance and the techniques of the Byzantines and the simplicity of archaic art and the expressive possibilities of all these seen in purely abstract terms, without figuration, without themes. I particularly love Leonardo, Tintoretto, Fra Angelico, Cimabue (Ravenna mosaics), Egyptian art etc.

(c) State when arrived at positive appreciation of ‘abstract’ principles of art and why you adopted them.
From 1947 until 1952 it was always these studies and experiments, and I became increasingly convinced that, for me at least, there was something in it. There were no principles at all (more of personal discovery at a time when such things had just become possible).

(d) What is the chief aim of your work, seen
1) aesthetically
2) socially
The greatest possible expression with one simple form.

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