BEDTIME STORIES

Anna-Eva Bergman (1909–1987) was a Norwegian-French artist whose practice developed from earlyillustration and caricature into a highly distinctive form of abstraction. Trained in Oslo and Vienna, she settledin Paris in 1929, where she met Hans Hartung, whom she later married. From the 1950s onward, Bergmanbuilt a reduced visual vocabulary of mountains, stones, boats, fjords and horizons inspired by the Nordiclandscape, translating natural forms into monumental, elemental compositions. Central to her work was theuse of metal leaf, applied over painted surfaces so that light became an active part of the image, shifting itsappearance according to the viewer’s position.Executed in 1972,Nº22-1972 Deux capsbelongs to Bergman’s mature period and to her systematic practiceof numbering and titling works by year. The title refers to two headlands, a recurring motif rooted in herexperience of the Norwegian coast and in the journeys through Northern Norway that profoundly shaped hervisual language. Rather than describing a specific landscape, Bergman sought to evoke its scale, weight andatmosphere through simplified geometric forms. The use of acrylic and metal leaf is characteristic of herwork at the time, combining dense painted surfaces with reflective material to create a tension betweensolidity and luminosity. The motif of the cape appears repeatedly across her oeuvre, alongside stones andmountains, linking this work to a broader exploration of landscape as memory and archetype.