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The Arts Intel Report

Anna-Eva Bergman & Hans Hartung: And We'll Never Be Parted

Unknown photographer Anna-Eva Bergman and Hans Hartung, in Leucate, 1929.

Klárov 5, Malá Strana 118 00, 1 Praha 1, Czechia

“The first and most important thing is to remain free,” said Hans Hartung, a key figure in the Art Informel movement. “Free in each line you undertake, in your ideas and in your political action, in your moral conduct.” His Norwegian wife, the Abstract Expressionist Anna-Eva Bergman, shared his beliefs, creating celestial paintings inspired by nature. They met in Paris in 1929 at the Académie André Lhote, got married, and then divorced in 1938. During W.W. II, Hartung was hunted by the Gestapo and lost a leg; Bergman returned to Norway to paint the coastline’s white light. They both remarried. And yet they reunited in 1952 and moved into a studio in Paris—thus beginning their most prolific period. This exhibition sheds light on this incredible couple, as well as on Bergman’s previously overlooked oeuvre. —Elena Clavarino