Lot 222
Siri Berg (American - born in Sweden, 1921-2020). Two woodblocks, ca. 1970s. Signed on matte at lower right. Siri Berg mastered the technique of Japanese woodblock printmaking and incorporated her woodblocks into collages. This piece features two woodblocks which demonstrate Siri Berg's embrace of clean lines, geometry, modern design, and color in a custom frame. Berg's passion for color was so great that she created her own color charts and mixed her own paints. Her nonrepresentational abstraction stemmed from the Bauhaus theories of Josef Albers and Johannes Itten. Berg upheld the purity of geometric abstraction and the fundamental tenets of color, form, and value in compositions like this pendant pair. Size of each woodblock is approximately: 5" L x 9.75" W (12.7 cm x 24.8 cm) Size of frame: 12.75" L x 29.5" W (32.4 cm x 74.9 cm)
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Siri Berg earned her BA from the Institute of Art and Architecture at the University of Brussels and immigrated to the United States when she was 19 years old. Siri lived and worked in New York City's SoHo neighborhood and was a longstanding member of the American Abstract Artists. In addition, she taught Color Theory at Parsons School of Design for over 3 decades and was passionate about the effects of color. In her words, "I didn't like 24 colors on a wheel and I didnt like 12. I found that from 1 to 9, I could do a perfect gradation."
Siri Berg's honors included being featured in Cynthia Maris Dantzic's "100 New York Painters" (2006). Furthermore, Siri Berg's art was featured in Concrete, the American Abstract Artists International 75th Anniversary exhibition in Paris, "Siri Berg: Its All About Color" at the Painting Center in New York City as well as solo exhibitions at The American Swedish Museum, Philadelphia; The Yeshiva University Museum, New York; The Robert C. Williams American Museum, Atlanta; Swedish American Museum, Chicago; Gibson Gallery Museum at SUNY Potsdam; The William Whipple Art Museum at Southwest Minnesota State University, Marshall; Shirley Fiterman Art Center, New York; The Bonniers Konsthall Museum, Stockholm; and Swedish Embassy, Washington, DC.
Siri Berg's art is in the permanent collections of prominent museums including the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the National Museum of American Jewish History, Southwest Minnesota State University Art Museum MN; New York University, New York; Gray Art Gallery, NYU, New York; Moderna Museet (Museum of Modern Art), Stockholm, Sweden; The Swedish Ambassador's Residence in Washington D.C.; Cornell University's Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Ithaca, NY, and more.
Provenance: private Boulder, Colorado, USA collection
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#171218
- Condition: Signed by the artist and identified as #594 a.b in pencil on the matte below woodblock on right. Woodblocks are in a custom, museum quality frame. They have not been examined outside the frame but appear to be very strong. The woodblock on the right has some creasing likely from the collage process as Siri Berg incorporated woodblocks into collages.
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