Exhibition opening in Paris

The exhibition Voyage vers l'intérieur (A Journey Within) at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (MAM) is the first major retrospective exhibition of Anna-Eva Bergman’s works in France, where she lived much of her adult life. 

The exhibition of some 200 works presents the full breadth of Anna-Eva Bergman’s artistry – paintings, photographs, drawings, manuscripts and archives. The museum has a collection of more than 100 of the artist’s works.

The Queen is welcomed to the exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. Photo: Sara Svanemyr, The Royal Court

Queen Sonja was welcomed to the exhibition by museum director Fabrice Hergott, exhibition curator Hèléne Leroy and the chair of the museum’s Society of Friends, Jean Paul Agon.

Together with the wife of the French President, Brigitte Macron, and Deputy Mayor of Paris, Carine Rolland, the Queen was given a tour of the exhibition before an opening event in the museum’s Matisse Room. Norway’s Ambassador to France, Niels Engelschiøn, accompanied the Queen during the exhibition opening on Wednesday evening. 

To Norway

Anna-Eva Bergman was a Norwegian painter but spent a large part of her life in France, most notably in Paris and Antibes. The artist employed a non-figurative visual language incorporating natural forms – abstract, yet extremely precise. 

The exhibition presents selected works from different periods of the artist’s life. Photo: Sara Svanemyr, The Royal Court

Ms Bergman was born in Stockholm in 1909 but moved at a young age with her mother to Norway and lived in the Hardanger district as well as in Fredrikstad, Oslo and other places. She attended the Norwegian National College of Art and Design and the Norwegian Academy of Fine Art in Oslo before travelling to Paris in 1929. 

From 1973 she lived in Antibes, where a foundation today manages the home of Ms Bergman and her husband, the artist Hans Hartung, as a museum and conserves the works and catalogues they left behind. 

In a major collaboration between the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and the National Museum in Oslo, the exhibition Voyage vers l'intérieur will come to the National Museum in Oslo next summer.

Guests viewed the exhibition and selected works during the opening event. Photo: Sara Svanemyr, The Royal Court

Major art institution

The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris is one of the most important art institutions in Paris. Located between the Champs-Élysées and the Eiffel Tower in the Palais de Tokyo, a monumental building dedicated in 1937, it is one of France’s largest museums of modern and contemporary art.

The museum’s collection of more than 15 000 works from the 20th century to the present features some of history’s greatest artists, including Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani and Marc Chagall.