Nr. 2-1953, Stele med måne

Anna-Eva Bergman began her artist training at the Norwegian National Academy of Art and Craft in Oslo in 1926. She was taught by among others Axel Revold at the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo and André Lhote in Paris. Bergman can be seen as one of the Norwegian modernists who evolved abstract painting from the mid- 1940s and throughout the 1950s. Bergman lived most of her adult life in France, but retained strong bonds to Norway. Early on in her career she worked figuratively and drew illustrations. After making the switch to painting, she developed images inspired by surrealism and avant-garde painting where colours, lines, and geometric and organic shapes form rhythmic, abstract compositions. Many of her paintings from the early 1950s resonate with artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró, and Gustave Singier.

Bergman gradually developed an abstract style characterized by its distinctive shapes and fields of colour and extensive use of silver and gold to evoke light. She based her works on Norwegian nature and created stylized images of mountains, oceans, horizons, and other natural features.

In Stele with Moon we see a dark and a light shape against a light background. The shapes do not relate to a specific landscape but are rather pure elements that almost hover in the pictorial plane. The title describes the shapes, something that steers the picture towards symbolism and adds a temporal and spiritual dimension. By reducing the silver-coated moon and black stele to geometric shapes, Bergman imbues the work with an archetypical quality.