Review (via Tribeca Tribune): Siri Berg's Half-Century Passion
Siri Berg at work in her studio. Top: Desert, 1970. Bottom: La Ronde, 1972. Berg photo by Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
Left: Straight Lines, 1996. Right: Bars, 1996
Siri Berg's Half-Century Passion for Color and Shape at Fiterman Art Center
December 29, 2016
By April Koral
“Siri Berg: In Color” is the understated title of a nearly 50-year retrospective of the Abstract Expressionist Siri Berg, now at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center. Understated because this painter, who is 95 and still making art in her Soho studio, does not just work in color, she revels in it, creating canvases of unbounded exuberance and subtle beauty. Her treatment of color, often in alliance with shape (mostly circular and rectangular) and texture, can soothe even the casual viewer. Those willing to linger will be rewarded with a new appreciation of color for its own sake—one hue gaining power through the blending or proximity with the next.
Berg, who came to the U.S. from her native Sweden at 19, began painting seriously while living in the Riverdale section of the Bronx with her husband and raising their children.
"I worked at a bridge table in the master bedroom," Berg recalled recently as she gave a tour of her loft studio where new pieces were in varying stages of progress. "When one son left for college, I moved into his bedroom." In the 1980s, she finally got a studio of her own in Soho, where she also lives.
Reviewers have described Berg's work as deceptively simple. "It's a bit like a bento box with beautifully arranged sushi," an observer said in the Swedish publication, Nordstjernan. "It’s abstract art at its most organized and elegant, and her sense of color is simply sublime."
