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

The exhibition We'll Never Be Parted offers a new perspective on one of the most extraordinary and quietly radical artistic couples of the 20th century – Anna-Eva Bergman and Hans Hartung – and presents more than 300 works, including important paintings, rare sketches, photographs, artifacts from their studios, personal items, correspondence, and works they gave to each other. Curated by Thea Carnegy-Tan and Pierre Wat in collaboration with the French Fondation Hartung-Bergman, the exhibition offers an intimate look at a decades-long artistic dialogue shaped by separation, reunion, and lasting creative closeness.

The book traces their life journey from their first meeting in the 1920s, through more than a decade of separation, to their reunion in 1952 and the deaths of both in the 1980s. It presents drawings, masterful paintings, mutual gifts, archival documents, and photographs, many of which have not been published before. For the first time, Bergman and Hartung's shared thematic interests – nature, the cosmos, music, and more – are presented in tandem to depict their shared artistic life.

The key to the book's graphic design was a simple dialogue scheme that exhibition curator Pierre Wat drew at the first meeting to discuss the concept of the publication. We rotated this principle horizontally in the book so that it runs through all the pages without disrupting the readability of the content. Everything related to both artists runs through the horizontal center of the book, with the texts pulsating up and down from the center according to their length. Eva Bergman's works are always placed at the top of the page, and Hans Hartung's at the bottom. The book opens with a generously designed thirty-page timeline created from their portraits in full-page format with initials and captions placed according to who they belong to.